Whether it was a dramatic one-off or a warning of things to come, Iran’s launch of two long-range missiles across more than 2,000 miles towards Diego Garcia, Britain’s territory in the Indian Ocean, should have been a wake-up call for our government.
Instead, in his tour of breakfast TV and radio studios yesterday, housing minister Steve Reed – not a defence minister – offered bland and misleading reassurances.
He asserted that Iran did not have missiles that could reach London, saying there ‘is no assessment to substantiate’ the suggestion. He also claimed: ‘We have systems and defences in place that keep the United Kingdom safe.’
I fear he is wrong on both counts.
Until the past few days, Iran’s Khorramshahr missiles were thought to have a range of 1,240 miles. Now, it seems they’ve been adapted to travel up to 2,400 miles, which puts not just Diego Garcia, but London at the edge of their range – and at risk.
The Khorramshahrs – based on a North Korean design – are formidable. They can be loaded with fuel in just 12 minutes, making them hard to detect and destroy on the ground.
Yet they are not the only long-range threat available to the mullahs. Iran also has basic rocket systems for launching communications satellites which could be repurposed to deliver warheads, and perhaps already have been.
Iran’s Khorramshahr missiles were thought to have a range of 1,240 miles. Now, it seems they’ve been adapted to travel up to 2,400 miles
Could the claims about Iran’s new long-range strike power be exaggerated?
The clearest and most troubling account of the Iranian threat has come from Israel, whose prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu has an interest in spreading fear and dragging other countries into the war on his side.
But even if Israel has scaremongered in the past, we now have daily evidence of Iran’s prowess in ballistics technology, including missiles with multiple manoeuvrable warheads.
To judge from the Diego Garcia attack – one missile was intercepted, the other fell short – it would be complacent to dismiss the suggestion that there has been a big leap forward in the distance Iranian rockets can travel, as our government seems to have done.
Could the destruction of Iran’s weapons stockpile in the past few weeks justify ministers’ confidence that we are safe?
The recent attacks on factories and missile stores and the assassination of the regime’s missile scientists have certainly reduced the threat. But it has by no means been eliminated.
Back at the dawn of rocket technology, when Hitler’s scientists invented the V1 – a primitive cruise missile with a jet engine – and then the V2, a supersonic ballistic missile, they did so in the teeth of a massive RAF bombardment.
Yet these deadly missiles were still churned out in their thousands, hitting London and the South-East hard.
Equally troubling is Britain’s vulnerability. We have no ground-based anti-missile defences and the handful of ship-based systems we do possess are aboard vessels deployed far from our shores.
The Government is now talking about ‘contingency plans’, but it’s too late. The touch paper has already been lit.
Iran’s launch of two long-range missiles across more than 2,000 miles towards Diego Garcia, Britain’s territory in the Indian Ocean, should have been a wake-up call
Why has our Prime Minister been so worryingly vague about what actually happened at Diego Garcia, in the Chagos Island group?
Despite Steve Reed’s reassurances, the plain truth is that there is next to nothing this country can do to prevent a multi-stage Iranian rocket from hitting us. We would depend on American missile systems stationed round Europe.
If the mullahs decide to test the morale of the nation they denounce as the ‘Little Satan’, southern England will simply have to take it.
The least the British public can expect is some honesty about the situation. Back in the 1940s, we trusted Churchill’s government to give us the bad news as well as the good, to spell out the hard truths – and he delivered.
In contrast, Keir Starmer’s instinct is to cover things up with weasel words. What exactly is ‘defensive bombing’, for example? Why has our Prime Minister been so worryingly vague about what actually happened at Diego Garcia?
Such a mealy-mouthed approach can only add to the growing sense of anxiety and crippling indecision.
For Britain, there is no immediate relief in sight. Even if Donald Trump does somehow achieve the complete victory he demands, a terrible genie has escaped the bottle.
The threat of missile and drone warfare from Iran and its allies is all too likely to remain. Moreover, war and the threat of war are real prospects on other fronts – not least from such serious military and scientific powers as China and Russia.
This is no time to be asleep at the wheel.
- Mark Almond is director of the Crisis Research Institute in Oxford
