Iran brings Europe into range with missiles fired at Diego Garcia

When Iranian missile crews rolled two of their largest weapons out of hiding and launched them at the US-UK Diego Garcia military base 2,500 miles away, they revealed the Islamic Republic had longer-range missiles than many analysts had realized—and a leadership that was no longer interested in hiding them.

The attack in the early hours Friday was Iran’s first-ever use of intermediate-range ballistic missiles, ones that fly far enough to hit much of Europe. The Trump administration had cited Iran’s work on missiles that could one day carry nuclear weapons to the US among its reasons for going to war. 

As recently as last month, Iran’s leaders were insisting they had limited their missile ranges to the equivalent of half the distance to Diego Garcia. Friday’s missiles missed their target—one failed in flight and the other disappeared after a Navy destroyer launched SM-3 interceptors at them, US officials said.

But Tehran’s ability to fire them demonstrated a more-aggressive posture by the regime and progress on the capacity to strike far beyond the Middle East. “It shows how far the decision-making process is moving towards the extreme,” said Danny Citrinowicz, who formerly headed the Iran desk for Israeli military intelligence. 

Now, by taking aim at Diego Garcia, a US-UK military base about as far away as London or Paris, Tehran has created a new security reality for Europe and parts of the Pacific.

European countries have long worried that Iran might upgrade its existing missile arsenal to increase its range and target them. The launches make that hypothetical threat real, said Douglas Barrie, a specialist in military aerospace at the International Institute for Strategic Studies.

Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi warned Friday on social media that the UK is putting British lives at risk by allowing its bases to be used in the war.

Following the attack, the UK government granted America greater access to its bases around the world to strike targets in Iran and prevent the regime from firing missiles or threatening international shipping.

Israel said the missiles fired at Diego Garcia had two stages. That suggests Iran might instead have adapted one of its purportedly civilian space launchers for military purposes, said Fabian Hinz, an independent missile analyst.

The complexity of reworking an existing warhead or missile means Iran likely prepared for the attack long before the war, said Farzin Nadimi, an Iran-focused senior fellow with the Washington Institute, a US-based think tank. It would have been difficult to accomplish such re-engineering under the bombardments of the past three weeks, he said.

He added that it wasn’t clear whether the missiles fired by Iran could actually reach Diego Garcia, given that they didn’t hit their target. Building longer-range missiles that can work reliably is complicated owing to the stresses they experience in flight. The prospect of missiles that could reach the US from Iran was considered unlikely even before the damage done by the war.

Diego Garcia, located on a remote island in the British Indian Ocean Territory, is a strategic base where the U.S. hosts bombers, nuclear submarines and guided-missile destroyers.

The US military had taken seriously the risk of an Iranian missile strike and positioned a guided-missile destroyer near the base, US officials said. The destroyer fired SM-3 interceptors at the incoming Iranian missiles, they said.

The more significant change in Iran might be in terms of strategy. Iran’s rulers had approached previous conflicts with the US and Israel with measured responses aimed at avoiding escalatory spirals.

But with protests, an economic crisis, the killing of top leaders and military pressure pushing the regime toward collapse, they decided on a more-aggressive approach this time in hopes of deterring the US and Israel from attacking them again.

This push conflict at risk of escalating to a level that could cause not just a wider war, but an economic depression, if the Straight of Hormuz is closed permanently. At the moment, all eventualities, from an offramp that leaves the Iranian regime in place, and markets stabilized, to all out war and depression, are on the table.