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Israeli Chief of Staff Eyal Zamir warned Saturday that Iran's attempted missile strike on the American base at Diego Garcia demonstrates that European capitals, including Berlin, Paris, and Rome, are now within direct range of Tehran's ballistic arsenal, a dramatic escalation in the three-week-old war that has shattered Iran's longstanding claims about the limits of its missile program.
Iran fired two intermediate-range ballistic missiles at the joint U.S.-U.K. military base on the remote Indian Ocean island on Friday, according to a Wall Street Journal report citing multiple U.S. officials. Neither missile reached its target. One failed mid-flight, while a U.S. warship launched an SM-3 interceptor at the second, though it remained unclear whether the interception was successful.
The base suffered no damage and no casualties were reported. But it was not the outcome that alarmed Western defense officials, it was the range.
Diego Garcia sits roughly 4,000 kilometers from Iranian territory, exactly double the distance Tehran has publicly acknowledged its missiles can travel. As recently as late February, Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi told interviewers that Iran had deliberately capped its missile range below 2,000 kilometers for defensive and deterrent purposes, dismissing suggestions of longer-range development as disinformation.
The strike attempt obliterated that claim overnight. Iran's semi-official Mehr news agency confirmed the attempted strike on Saturday, describing the targeting of the base as a "significant step" that demonstrated Iran's missile range extends far beyond what adversaries had previously imagined.
Zamir, the Israeli military's chief of staff, seized on the implications during a briefing in which he assessed the campaign had reached its "halfway" stage. The two-stage intercontinental ballistic missile Iran launched toward Diego Garcia was not aimed at Israel, he said, but its 4,000-kilometer range means that "Berlin, Paris, and Rome are all within direct threat range."
Open-source intelligence analysts quickly mapped the implications: an intermediate-range ballistic missile launched from central Iran with a radius of approximately 4,500 kilometers could theoretically reach targets deep into Central Europe. Depending on where launch platforms are positioned, potentially every capital on the continent falls within the system's reach.
The attack represented Iran's first operational deployment of intermediate-range ballistic missiles and a significant attempt to project power far beyond the Middle East. Until now, Iran's publicly known arsenal consisted primarily of short- and medium-range systems. According to the U.S. Office of the Director of National Intelligence, Iran maintains the largest ballistic missile stockpile in the Middle East, with a self-imposed range of 2,000 kilometers that Iranian officials long said was sufficient because it could reach Israel.
That limit, formalized in 2015, was part of a broader strategic doctrine that prioritized missile precision and accuracy over extended range. U.S. officials, however, had long suspected Iran's space program could serve as a pathway to intercontinental ballistic missile capability. The Friday strike raised the possibility that Iran's space program had been concealing a weapons system, or that existing missiles had capabilities that were deliberately understated.
Bloomberg reported that the attempted strike demonstrated weapons capability that goes beyond what Tehran was previously known to have possessed.
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