Iran attempted a missile strike on the Diego Garcia joint UK-US base, about 3860km away. Photo / US Navy
Iran’s reported attack on the Diego Garcia military base, deep in the Indian Ocean, with two ballistic missiles has raised alarm bells across the West.
The Khorramshahr-4, a 20-tonne rocket that can carry 80 cluster munitions, is thought to have been the weapon fired at the joint United Kingdom-United States base in the Chagos Islands.
Defence analysts told the Telegraph that the attempted strike on a base more than 2400 miles (3860km) away could put continental Europe – and possibly even Britain – under threat from Iranian ballistic missiles.
“London, Paris, Berlin and every other European capital now lies within credible Iranian reach,” said Brigadier-General Ran Kochav, a former Rusi research fellow and ex-commander of the Israeli air and missile force.
Most experts think the Khorramshahr-4 has a maximum range of around 3060km.
This would put it in range of UK and other military bases in southern and eastern Europe, including Cyprus, Greece, Turkey, the Balkans and perhaps even Italy, Austria and Germany.
The IDF claimed yesterday that a range of 4023km may be possible. This would put parts of Britain in range.
Cyprus has already been hit by a drone thought to have been fired from Lebanon. Two ballistic missiles intercepted over Turkey last week may have been targeted at Cyprus by Iran, said one Israeli expert.
“We heard about interceptions of ballistic missiles over Turkey. I don’t think that Turkey was the target – it is more likely Cyprus,” said Tal Inbar, a research fellow of the Missile Defence Advocacy Alliance.
“Regarding the ultra-long range of Iranian Khorramshahr, keep in mind that the ‘father’ of the dynasty, the Soviet R-27, even with less propellant, has a range of 3000km.”
Inbar cautioned that it was not clear if Iran had mastered the technologies needed for successfully firing missiles at this distance – something that may explain why the reported attack on Diego Garcia was unsuccessful.
Neither of the missiles hit their target, with one believed to have been intercepted by a US warship’s SM-3 interceptor and the other failing in flight, according to the Wall Street Journal.
“Is it possible [to reach Diego Garcia]? Technically, yes. Do we know of any previous test in Iran to such a very long range? No, and it’s not just about taking away some of the weight from the re-entry vehicle and the warhead,” he said.
“It’s also about guidance and control, which is a considerably more challenging task for such a long range. And also there are some obstacles in terms of extreme heat as regards to the re-entry vehicle.”
Nevertheless, the attempted missile attack on Diego Garcia will raise questions about the UK’s preparedness to fend off Iranian strikes on British bases around the world as the war drags on.
HMS Dragon, deployed after RAF Akrotiri was struck by an Iranian drone, has still not reached Cyprus.
Philip Ingram, a defence analyst and former colonel in British military intelligence, told the Telegraph that only the Type 45 destroyer could defend the base against ballistic missiles, and that the Iranian missile launch towards the Chagos Islands showed the UK base in Cyprus was vulnerable to attack.
“If the Iranians got ballistic missiles that can hit Diego Garcia, we have similar strategic assets that are based in Cyprus that are even more important for what’s going on across the Middle East – and it is quite clear that Cyprus is well within ballistic missile range,” he said.
Iran is known to have three long-range munitions capable of hitting parts of Europe and other distant targets, including the Khorramshahr.
The Iranian Shahed-136 drone, which has been tested and refined through years of use in Russia’s war in Ukraine, can also be used to hit distant targets with a range of 2500km.
These relatively simple and cheap munitions have been fired by Iran at countries across the Middle East in recent weeks and, on March 1, a “Shahed-type” drone struck RAF Akrotiri, causing minor damage to a hangar.
The UK authorities said the drone had been fired, not from Iran, but from Lebanon by the Iranian proxy militant group Hezbollah.
Iran also has Soumar cruise missiles, which are thought to be capable of hitting targets up to 3000km away.
Unlike Iran’s ballistic missiles, these munitions – like the drones – have a smaller payload but fly low, hugging the terrain and making them more difficult to pick up on radar. They are also more precise.
Experts believe that Iran’s ballistic missiles and cruise missiles could, in theory, carry nuclear or chemical warheads.
However, Iran does not possess nuclear warheads and there is no evidence that it currently has chemical weapons, although it did manufacture some after the Iran-Iraq war of 1980-1988.
A paper published in early March by the European Centre for Counterterrorism and Intelligence Studies (ECCI) said Iran would be likely to target a range of different assets if it extended the war into Europe.
“If Iran decides to strike Europe, analysts expect a multi-modal approach: likely precision strikes on Nato logistics hubs and economic disruption through attacks on Mediterranean port infrastructure or LNG [liquefied natural gas] terminals in Italy, Greece and Romania,” it said.
The same paper said Europe, under the Nato umbrella, was “well equipped to defend against these munitions”.
It quoted Colonel Martin O’Donnell, a spokesman for Supreme Headquarters Allied Powers Europe, who said that while Nato did not dismiss the possibility of an Iranian strike on Europe, he was confident that it could be dealt with.
“Nato does have what it takes to defend alliance territory, to defend our one billion inhabitants. And so I think Europeans – I of course live in Europe myself – should rest easy at night knowing that Nato has the ability to defeat any such threat that gets posed to the alliance,” O’Donnell said.
General Richard Barrons, a former commander of Joint Forces Command, told the BBC that the strike on Diego Garcia showed Iran’s missiles were more capable than first believed.
“Previously we thought Iran’s missiles had a range of 2000km, and Diego [Garcia] is 3800km from Iran,” he said.
Last year, Iran threatened to hit Diego Garcia in the event of a US attack, saying it could do it with newer versions of the Khorramshahr ballistic missile.
The Wall Street Journal, which first reported the attempted strike on Diego Garcia citing unnamed US officials, said neither of the missiles hit the base but marked “a significant attempt to reach far beyond the Middle East”.
The report came just hours after US President Donald Trump again pressured the UK and other European allies to send ships to re-open the Strait of Hormuz, which Iran has effectively shut, blocking oil exports from the Gulf.
In a social media post he attacked his Nato allies over their lack of support for the US-Israeli war against Iran, calling them “cowards”.
The IDF later claimed: “The Iranian terrorist regime poses a global threat, now with missiles that can reach London, Paris or Berlin. The Iranian terror regime has carried out attacks against 12 countries in the region and is developing a capability that poses a much broader threat.”
Ever since the US and Israel launched their attack on Iran on February 28, Iran has been escalating the conflict “horizontally”, targeting other countries and assets, most notably shipping in the Strait.
“Horizontal escalation occurs when a state widens the geographic and political scope of a conflict rather than intensifying it vertically in a single theatre,” said Professor Robert Pape, the director of a University of Chicago project on security and threats.
“It is especially appealing as a strategy for the weaker parties in a military contest. Instead of trying to defeat a stronger adversary head-on, the weaker side multiplies arenas of risk – drawing additional states, economic sectors, and domestic publics into the remit of the conflict.”
However, it is unclear whether launching strikes on Europe makes strategic sense for Iran in the same way. So far, the UK and Europe have not directly got involved in the war despite US pressure to do so, and Iran is unlikely to want to change that.
“In terms of missile defence in Europe, there are some capabilities, but surely not enough. But I can hardly imagine that Iran will start another front, directly targeting European assets,” said Inbar.
An exception are bases which are being used by the US to launch strikes on Iran.
Iran has said from the outset that it regards such bases as legitimate military targets, which is why it has targeted UK bases in Diego Garcia, Cyprus, northern Iraq, and Oman.
Any country that allows its bases to be used against Iran is “not safe”, an Iranian source told the Telegraph yesterday.
“Stay away from the carnage and traps that America and Israel have set for you. It doesn’t matter where you are, we know where the enemy’s planes are flying from,” they added.
The UK did not allow the US to use its bases for initial offensive attacks against Iran but subsequently gave permission for them to be used for defensive action.
That position changed again on Saturday when the UK Government said the US could use British bases to strike Iranian forces that are threatening ships in the Strait of Hormuz.
However, the Government continued to frame its position as purely defensive.
“The agreement for the US to use UK bases in the collective self-defence of the region includes US defensive operations to degrade the missile sites and capabilities being used to attack ships in the Strait of Hormuz,” it said in a statement.
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