Iran's strike attempt on Diego Garcia reveals missile range

Gerry Doyle and Alex Wickham, Bloomberg News on Mar 21, 2026

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Iran launched ballistic missiles at the joint U.S.-U.K. military base in Diego Garcia on Friday, demonstrating a weapons capability that goes beyond what Tehran was known to have possessed.

The base, a strategic airfield that can host B-2 stealth bombers located nearly 2,500 miles (4,000 kilometers) away from Iran, suffered no damage, according to a person familiar with the matter speaking on condition of anonymity.

It was the first time in the three-week-old war that Tehran was reported to have deployed weapons with that kind of range, with one expert suggesting it may have used a modified space launch vehicle to conduct the attack. U.S. and Israeli strikes have already destroyed some parts of Iran’s satellite and rocket programs.

The strike on Friday came hours before Prime Minister Keir Starmer’s government gave permission to the U.S. to use British bases including Diego Garcia “for specific and limited defensive operations.” Iran’s Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi has hit out at the move, warning that Tehran “will exercise its right to self-defense.”

U.S. Central Command didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment on the strike, which was first reported by the Wall Street Journal. Without directly referencing Diego Garcia, the U.K. Ministry of Defence criticized Tehran’s “reckless attacks,” calling them a threat to British interests and British allies.

RAF jets and other U.K. military assets are defending British people and personnel in the region, the ministry said in a statement.

Weapons with a range of almost 2,500 miles would put major European cities including London and Paris at risk of an attack from Iran. Still, it’s unclear whether Tehran possesses any more of the intermediate-range ballistic missiles.

“Nobody, and I mean nobody, even guessed” Iran had missiles with that range, said William Alberque, a Europe-based senior fellow at the Pacific Forum. “It means they probably used a modified missile — maybe a prototype,” indicating Tehran still had storage or workshops that could make the alterations.

Iran could have removed weight from an existing missile or even taken off the warhead to extend its range, Alberque said. It could also have been a one-off modified design, he added.

The country is known to have civilian rockets such as the Zoljanah space launch vehicle that could be converted to work as ballistic missiles, said Jeffrey Lewis of the James Martin Center for Nonproliferation Studies in Monterey, California.

“Iran has a number of space launch vehicles that could be used as intermediate range ballistic missiles” Lewis said. “We previously estimated that the Zoljanah solid-propellant SLV might have a range of 4,000-5,000 kilometers as a two-stage missile.”

Solid fuel engines also mean the missiles can be fired with much less warning as they do not need to be loaded with propellant.

The U.S. and Israel have estimated they have destroyed about two-thirds of Iran’s missile launchers, and Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth says that the regime’s offensive capability has been reduced by 90%. Still, Tehran has continued to hit targets around the Gulf with hundreds of ballistic missiles and more than 2,100 Shahed rudimentary cruise missiles so far.