Expansion | Iran expands the scope of the war with an attack on a British-American base in the Indian Ocean, 4,000 kilometers away
Iran has launched two ballistic missiles against Diego García, the joint military base of the United States and the United Kingdom about 4,000 kilometers away, in the middle of the Indian Ocean, according to the state agency Mehr. None have reached the strategic base: one failed in flight, while a US warship fired an interceptor at the second, although it is not clear if it shot it down, according to the newspaper. The Wall Street Journalwhich advanced the news.
The shot, in any case, represents an escalation and a message from Tehran: it reveals a range of its missiles that it had not recognized, it represents its first operational use of intermediate-range ballistic missiles (IRBM, in its acronym in English) and it extends the attacks far beyond the Middle East, the main theater of this war.
Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi said last month that his country had voluntarily limited the range of its missiles to 2,000 kilometers, enough to reach Israel and US bases in Arab Gulf countries, but not the Indian Ocean. Until now, military experts assumed that Iran had projectiles that reached 3,000 kilometers, in addition to hypersonic ones, such as the Fattah-2 that it presented in 2023.
In the table of Iran’s ballistic capabilities, Iran Watch, part of the Wisconsin Project on Nuclear Arms Control, cites as “operational” three models (Simorgh and Ghaem-100) that reach 4,000 kilometers. A third, Zuljanah, appears as already tested.
Located on a remote island under British sovereignty in the Indian Ocean, Diego García is a strategic base where the United States has fighter-bombers, nuclear submarines and guided missile destroyers.
The Indian Ocean is also a symbolic ocean in this war because the United States already moved the conflict there on the 4th. It sank an Iranian warship with a torpedo in international waters, killing 84 people (buried this week in Iran in the middle of a crowd). There are still 20 missing members of the crew.
