The US president earlier called the UK’s plan to hand over the Chagos Islands to Mauritius “an act of great stupidity”
The US is weighing a plan to purchase the Chagos Islands directly from Mauritius in a bid to sideline the UK over the future of a crucial military base in the Indian Ocean, The Telegraph reported on Sunday.
The Chagos Islands are home to Diego Garcia, a joint UK-US military base regarded as one of the most important American installations outside the continental US. The facility hosts roughly 2,500 US military personnel and supports B-2 bomber deployments, operations against Houthi targets in Yemen, and has been used in strikes on Iran.
While the Chagos Islands are currently controlled by the UK, London last year approved a plan to hand them over to Mauritius while signing a 99-year lease on the base. The UK’s hand was essentially forced by a decades-long colonial sovereignty dispute, with the International Court of Justice ruling in 2019 that the UK’s 1965 separation of the islands from Mauritius was unlawful and in violation of the right to self-determination.
While US President Donald Trump initially supported the plan, in January he declared the deal “an act of great stupidity” and a threat to national security, while warning that China and Russia “have noticed this act of total weakness.” The UK subsequently put the deal on hold, pending negotiations with the US.
Now, “US officials have drawn up a [purchase] proposal to bypass Britain and make its own deal to take control of Diego Garcia,” according to the Telegraph. The plan is among several options being discussed within the Trump administration and caught the attention of US Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent, who presented it to Trump, the report says.
Should the US approve the plan, the UK would first have to hand over the Chagos Islands to Mauritius, and then Washington would negotiate the purchase with the Mauritians. The move would thus leave Britain as a bystander in a dispute over territory it has held for over two centuries.
The Mauritian government said, as cited by Reuters, that it had “taken note of the information reported by The Telegraph” but “has not received any official proposal” from the US. It also stressed that the republic’s sovereignty over the Chagos Archipelago is “non-negotiable.”
The report comes after Trump renewed talk of acquiring Greenland from Denmark and has repeatedly referred to Canada as the “51st state,” moves that put additional strain on Washington’s already uneasy relations with its traditional allies.
