US President Donald Trump has signalled a shift in tone on the United Kingdom’s proposed handover of the Chagos Islands to Mauritius, as the Maldives moves to assert control over disputed waters linked to the archipelago.
Trump said on Thursday he now views the deal agreed by UK Prime Minister Keir Starmer as the best available option, two weeks after calling the agreement an “act of great stupidity.”
Writing on his Truth Social platform, Trump said he had held productive discussions with Starmer and understood the prime minister had made the best deal possible. He stopped short of an explicit endorsement. He added the United States would retain the right to secure and reinforce its presence on Diego Garcia if US operations or forces were threatened in the future.
Downing Street said Starmer and Trump had discussed the Chagos Islands earlier on Thursday and agreed on the importance of the deal to secure the joint UK-US military base on Diego Garcia. The base would remain under a lease arrangement for an initial 99 years under the agreement with Mauritius.
The White House comments came as President Mohamed Muizzu announced a series of steps challenging international decisions linked to Chagos and surrounding maritime boundaries.
On Thursday, the Ministry of Defence said the Maldives had taken control of territorial waters in the northern Chagos area, rejecting a ruling by the International Tribunal for the Law of the Sea (ITLOS) on the maritime boundary between the Maldives and Mauritius.
In a statement posted on X, the Maldives National Defence Force said a Coast Guard ship and Air Corps drones had launched a special surveillance operation over the southern exclusive economic zone, covering 200 nautical miles from the southern baseline. The operation began on 4 February.
The defence ministry said the action followed Muizzu’s declaration during his 2026 presidential address to parliament. It said the state does not recognise any changes to Maldivian territory as defined under the Constitution and national laws. The ministry cited Article 115(d) of the Constitution, the Armed Forces Act and the Maldives Maritime Zones Act as the legal basis for continued military monitoring.
Muizzu said his administration had withdrawn a letter sent by former president Ibrahim Mohamed Solih to the prime minister of Mauritius on the sovereignty of the Chagos Archipelago and would challenge the ITLOS ruling. He said legal advice showed the letter had harmed national security and maritime interests.
Under the tribunal’s decision, the Maldives gained about 92,563 square kilometres of disputed maritime area but lost around 45,331 square kilometres from areas previously claimed as part of its exclusive economic zone.
Muizzu said Maldivian maritime limits were already defined under domestic law through archipelagic baselines set out in the Maritime Areas Act. He said his government would not recognise the boundary determined by the tribunal.
The president also said his government had engaged the British government on Chagos, sending two letters asserting a stronger Maldivian claim than Mauritius and holding a telephone call with the British deputy prime minister.
The ITLOS ruling drew in part on an advisory opinion of the International Court of Justice, which found sovereignty over Chagos lies with Mauritius and described Britain’s former administration of the islands as unlawful.
Muizzu announced a commission of inquiry to examine how the case was handled by the previous administration and said a special government office would be set up to manage legal, technical and diplomatic work related to the dispute.
Trump’s moderated language on the Chagos deal, paired with explicit warnings on the defence of Diego Garcia, comes as regional and international pressure grows around the future of the archipelago and the strategic waters around it.