Iran’s flex of long-range ballistic missiles vindicates Trump, may change European calculus

With Iran’s launch of two long-range missiles on Friday, putting nearly all of Europe in striking distance, the regime showed that it possesses a capability that President Donald Trump previously cited as a key justification for the U.S. conflict with the Islamic Republic after years of denying it publicly.

Iran fired the intermediate-range ballistic missiles (IRBMs) at the joint U.S.-U.K. airbase on Diego Garcia in the Indian Ocean, more than 2,000 miles from Tehran, on the same day that the British government gave the United States the green light to use the facility to launch strikes on Iraan.

"It could probably hit Paris, maybe London," security expert says

Neither missile struck the base. One failed in flight and a U.S. warship fired an interceptor missile at the other, though the U.S. military did not say whether the interception was successful.

“This whole conflict changed when Iran fired intermediate-range ballistic missiles at Diego Garcia, proving that it could probably hit Paris, maybe London,” Fred Fleitz, former Chief of Staff of Trump’s National Security Council during the president’s first term, told the John Solomon Reports podcast on Monday.

Besides its nuclear program, Iran’s conventional missile program was one of the primary motivations for the Trump administration’s decision to strike Iran earlier this year. In his State of the Union Address just days before the military action, the president told Congress that the regime is developing missiles that would one day be able to reach the United States.

“They’ve already developed missiles that can threaten Europe and our bases overseas, and they’re working to build missiles that will soon reach the United States of America,” Trump said in February. “They were warned to make no future attempts to rebuild their weapons program, in particular nuclear weapons.”

Though U.S. intelligence assessments show that Iran is about nine years away from developing a missile that could reach the United States, officials allege that Tehran’s growing space program provided the vector for achieving such a breakthrough.

Before the ballistic missile launch targeting Diego Garcia on Friday, Iranian leaders claimed their arsenal was limited in range and primarily for the purpose of deterring other countries rather than strikes abroad.

In an interview with NBC News earlier this month, the regime's Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi said that Iran had intentionally limited the range of its ballistic missiles to below 1,250 miles “because we don’t want to be felt as a threat by anybody else in the world.”

Much further than the previously estimated ranges of Iran’s missiles

But, after firing two missiles at the airbase, Iran’s semi-official Mehr News Agency reported that the missiles were fired at the base on Friday. “Iran’s targeting of Diego Garcia, about 4,000 kilometers [nearly 2,500 miles] away from Iran, implies its missiles have a greater range than Tehran has previously announced,” Mehr News Agency reported. “Iran’s targeting of US faraway military base demonstrates its missile capability in targeting long-range positions.”

Indeed, the range touted by the state-backed outlet would be much further than the previously estimated ranges of Iran’s missiles, excepting the Simorgh rocket — a space launch vehicle for satellites — if it were repurposed as a ballistic missile.

Neither the U.S. nor the United Kingdom provided information about how far the Iranian ballistic missiles flew. However, if the Iranian regime-backed news outlet can be trusted, such a range would place most of Europe within the radius of the IRBMs, including the more than 38 U.S. military bases on the continent. Members of the European NATO alliance host the U.S. European Command (Stuttgart, Germany), strategic air and naval bases, and U.S. forward-deployed nuclear weapons.

“It's sort of amusing to look back now, carried by arms control experts and European leaders that we know Iran doesn't have missiles that can fire more than 2000 kilometers, because the Supreme Leader said that they wouldn't do that. Well, that wasn't true,” Fleitz said.

“They have missiles with at least a range of 4000 kilometers, which can almost get to Paris. And for all we know, the missiles can go even further,” he added.

Though many European leaders have been hesitant about becoming overtly involved in the conflict, there are signs that their tune may be changing after Iran’s attempted long-range strike last week.

“He’s doing this to make the whole world safe,” says NATO brass

Two days after the ballistic missiles were launched, NATO Secretary General Mark Rutte — who has developed a close working relationship with President Trump since the latter’s term began last year — offered an endorsement of the U.S. military operation against Tehran and said he expects all the NATO nations to eventually come together to support him.

“He’s doing this to make the whole world safe,” Rutte told CBS News’ Margaret Brennan on Sunday.

He said the European members “always come together” and said that a nuclear-armed Iran would be as much a threat to Europe as the United States.

While the continent’s leaders have been reluctant to endorse the operation in public, the United States has relied heavily on its European bases and those of its allies to sustain the current conflict against Iran. The bases, which are spread from the United Kingdom to Turkey, have been used for refueling planes and drones, command and communications.

One of those reluctant allies, the United Kingdom, announced on Monday that it would send short-range air defense systems to the Middle East in order to counter Iranian missile strikes.

Iran’s strikes on its neutral neighbors and commercial shipping in the Strait of Hormuz have also prompted Europe to adopt a more pro-U.S. stance in the conflict. One day before the long-range ballistic missile launch, a coalition of 30 nations in and outside of Europe issued a joint statement condemning those strikes.

The countries, which included the U.K., France, Italy, Japan, Australia and other allies, also announced their “readiness to contribute to appropriate efforts to ensure safe passage through the Strait.” Whether that will include military assistance to the U.S. is not yet clear.

© JNS