{"id":64306,"date":"2026-02-19T18:49:51","date_gmt":"2026-02-19T18:49:51","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.africa-press.net\/mauritius\/all-news\/trump-urges-uk-not-to-give-away-diego-garcia"},"modified":"2026-02-19T19:24:17","modified_gmt":"2026-02-19T19:24:17","slug":"trump-urges-uk-not-to-give-away-diego-garcia","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.africa-press.net\/mauritius\/all-news\/trump-urges-uk-not-to-give-away-diego-garcia","title":{"rendered":"Trump urges UK not to give away Diego Garcia"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><span class=\"ap-article-header-tag\"> <strong>Africa-Press &#8211; Mauritius. <\/strong> <\/span>US President Donald Trump urged the United Kingdom on Wednesday not to give away Diego Garcia, warning America may need the island and a British airfield if Iran refuses to make a deal.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;Should Iran decide not to make a deal, it may be necessary for the United States to use Diego Garcia, and the Airfield located in Fairford, in order to eradicate a potential attack by a highly unstable and dangerous regime,&#8221; Trump wrote on his social media platform Truth Social.<\/p>\n<p>The US president said an attack would potentially be made on the UK and other &#8220;friendly countries.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>He criticized UK Prime Minister Keir Starmer for entering a lease agreement, stating leases are not appropriate for countries and the UK is making a \u201cbig mistake.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;Prime Minister Starmer should not lose control, for any reason, of Diego Garcia, by entering a tenuous, at best, 100 Year Lease,&#8221; Trump wrote.<\/p>\n<p>He said Britain is losing control of the strategically located Indian Ocean island through \u201cclaims of entities never known of before,\u201d calling them fictitious in nature. &#8220;This land should not be taken away from the U.K. and, if it is allowed to be, it will be a blight on our Great Ally.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>Trump said America will always be ready, willing and able to fight for Britain but the UK must remain strong &#8220;in the face of wokeism, and other problems put before them.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;Do not give away Diego Garcia,&#8221; he said.<\/p>\n<p>White House spokesperson Karoline Leavitt said the post by the president &#8220;should be taken as the policy of the&#8221; Trump administration.<\/p>\n<p>Diego Garcia is the largest island of the Chagos Archipelago and has been used as a joint UK-US military base since the 1970s. A treaty signed in May transfers sovereignty from Britain to Mauritius, with a provision that the military base would remain under British control for at least 99 years.<\/p>\n<p>The warning comes amid escalating US-Iran tensions and a significantly increased American presence in the Middle East as negotiations continue.<\/p>\n<p>Trump nearly authorized another strike in January because of Tehran&#8217;s crackdown on protesters but backed down after Iran stopped executions of demonstrators.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ap-article-footer-note\">Find more news and analyses on <span class=\"ap-highlight-country\">Mauritius<\/span> on the <span class=\"ap-highlight-brand\">Africa Press<\/span> website<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Africa-Press &#8211; Mauritius. US President Donald Trump urged the United Kingdom on Wednesday not to give away Diego Garcia, warning America may need the island and a British airfield if Iran refuses to make a deal. &#8220;Should Iran decide not to make a deal, it may be necessary for the United States to use Diego [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":84,"featured_media":64305,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2,12],"tags":[7117,2122,2692,241,363,1871],"class_list":["post-64306","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-all-news","category-policy","tag-diego-garcia","tag-donald-trump","tag-iran","tag-mauritius","tag-united-kingdom","tag-us"],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO Premium plugin v26.1 (Yoast SEO v27.0) - https:\/\/yoast.com\/product\/yoast-seo-premium-wordpress\/ -->\n<title>Trump urges UK not to give away Diego Garcia - Mauritius<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"-article-header-tag&quot;&gt; Africa-Press - Mauritius. US President Donald Trump urg ...\" \/>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.africa-press.net\/mauritius\/all-news\/trump-urges-uk-not-to-give-away-diego-garcia\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Trump urges UK not to give away Diego Garcia\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"-article-header-tag&quot;&gt; Africa-Press - Mauritius. 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