MARK ALMOND: This is no time to be asleep at the wheel. Iran’s threat is real
Whether a dramatic one-off or a warning of events to come, Iran’s launch of two long-range missiles more than 2,000 miles toward the British Indian Ocean territory of Diego Garcia should have been a wake-up call for our government.
Instead, during a tour of breakfast TV and radio studios yesterday, Housing Secretary Steve Reed, not the defense secretary, gave bland and misleading assurances.
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 defenses in place to keep the UK safe.’
I fear he is wrong in both cases.
Until the past few days, Iran’s Hurramshahr missiles were thought to have a range of 1,240 miles. Now, they appear to be adapted to travel up to 2,400 miles, putting not only Diego Garcia but London at the edge of their range and at risk.
Based on a North Korean design, the Khorramshahrs are imposing. They can be loaded with fuel in just 12 minutes, making them difficult to detect and destroy on the ground.
But these are not the only long-term threats facing the mullahs. Iran also has rudimentary rocket systems for launching communications satellites that can and perhaps already have been reused to deliver warheads.
Iran’s Khorramshahr missiles were thought to have a range of 1,240 miles. Now, they appear to be adapted to travel up to 2,400 miles
Could claims about Iran’s new long-range strike force be exaggerated?
The clearest and most disturbing statement about the Iranian threat came from Israel, whose prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, is interested in spreading fear and dragging other countries into the war on his side.
But even if Israel has fear-mongered in the past, we now have daily evidence of Iran’s prowess in ballistic technology, including missiles with multiple maneuverable warheads.
To judge from the Diego Garcia attack (one missile was intercepted, the other fell short) it would be unreserved to ignore, as our government appears to have done, the suggestion that there has been a major improvement in the distance that Iranian rockets can travel.
Could the destruction of Iran’s weapons stockpiles in the past few weeks justify ministers’ confidence that we are safe?
Recent attacks on factories and missile depots and assassinations of the regime’s missile scientists have certainly reduced the threat. But it has not been eliminated by any means.
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 despite a massive RAF bombing raid.
But these deadly missiles still numbered in the thousands and were hitting London and the South East hard.
Britain’s vulnerability is equally troubling. We have no land-based missile defense systems, and the handful of ship-based systems we do have are on ships deployed far from our coasts.
The government is now talking about ‘contingency plans’ but it is too late. The touch paper is already burned.
Iran’s launch of two long-range missiles more than 2,000 miles toward the British Indian Ocean territory of Diego Garcia should have been a wake-up call
Why has our Prime Minister been so alarmingly vague about what actually happened on Diego Garcia in the Chagos Island group?
Despite Steve Reed’s assurances, the reality is that there is virtually nothing this country can do to prevent a multi-stage Iranian rocket from hitting us. We would rely on American missile systems deployed around Europe.
If the mullahs decide to test the morale of the nation they denounce as the ‘Little Devil’, Southern England will have to accept it.
The least the British public can expect is some honesty about the situation. In the 1940s, we relied on the Churchill government to tell us the bad news as well as the good news, to tell us the hard truths, and it delivered.
By contrast, Keir Starmer’s instinct is to gloss over things with weasel words. For example, what exactly is ‘defensive bombing’? Why has our Prime Minister been so alarmingly vague about what actually happened in Diego Garcia?
Such a loud-mouthed approach can only increase the growing sense of anxiety and crippling indecision.
There is no immediate relief in sight for Britain. Even if Donald Trump somehow achieves the complete victory he claims, a terrible genie has escaped from the bottle.
The threat of missile and drone warfare from Iran and its allies is likely to continue. Moreover, war and the threat of war are real prospects on other fronts as well; especially in terms of serious military and scientific powers such as China and Russia.
This is not the time to fall asleep behind the wheel.
- Mark Almond is director of the Crisis Research Institute at Oxford
