Iran Targeted Diego Garcia Base With Ballistic Missiles

[Zorro]

Source: Wall Street Journal

Iran fired two intermediate-range ballistic missiles at Diego Garcia, a joint U.S.-U.K. military base in the middle of the Indian Ocean, according to multiple U.S. officials. Neither of the missiles hit the base, but the move marked Iran’s first operational use of IRBMs and a significant attempt to reach far beyond the Middle East and threaten U.S. interests.

One of the missiles failed in flight, and a U.S. warship fired an SM-3 interceptor at the other, according to two of the people. It couldn't be determined if an interception was made, according to one of the officials.

Iran’s targeting of Diego Garcia, about 4,000 kilometers from Iran, implies its missiles have a greater range than Tehran has previously acknowledged. Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi said last month that Iran has deliberately limited the range of its missiles to 2,000 kilometers.

Iran Watch, part of the Wisconsin Project on Nuclear Arms Control, says Iran has operational missiles that can reach 4,000 kilometers. Israel’s Alma Research and Education Center put the top range for Iranian missiles at around 3,000 kilometers but said there are reports of their weapons being developed with longer ranges.
Located on a remote island in the British Indian Ocean Territory, Diego Garcia is a strategic base from which the U.S. hosts bombers, nuclear submarines and guided-missile destroyers.

Read more: https://www.wsj.com/livecoverage/iran-us-israel-war-updates-2026/card/iran-targeted-diego-garcia-base-with-ballistic-missiles-rb7MdZW1CfwRTauDYHOt?

[LudwigPastorius]

1. If this wasn't a feint by Iran,...

NATO countries are going to double down on Trump to end this bloody foolishness. A 4,000 kilometer range (if that isn't bullshit) makes Rome, Vienna, Prague, and Berlin possible targets.

Hopefully, this is just gamesmanship from Iran.

[littlemissmartypants]

3. Even if it's "gamesmanship" mistakes happen. It's the history of SNAFU.

[littlemissmartypants]

2. The more assets moved into, through and around the area,

The more targets they will have to practice on whatever the actual range is for them.

[LetMyPeopleVote]

4. Geology as warfare: Iran put its missiles where physics, not diplomacy, keeps them safe

CNN satellite analysis and Alma Research findings show Iran’s underground tunnel cities, with internal rail systems that move missiles to blast-door exits, have survived the bombing campaign largely intact. The geology, analysts say, is the real defense.

Link to tweet

https://www.thestatesman.com/world/iran-underground-missile-railway-tunnel-us-israel-strikes-operation-epic-fury-1503573121.html

Three weeks of intensive US and Israeli strikes on Iran’s ballistic missile infrastructure have destroyed radar systems, collapsed tunnel entrances, and cratered ventilation shafts across dozens of sites. Iran keeps firing. The reason, according to satellite analysis by CNN and assessments by Israeli security research centre Alma Research, lies not above the ground but hundreds of metres beneath it; inside a network of underground missile cities connected by internal railways, carved into mountains that no bomb in the current American or Israeli arsenal can fully reach.

Iran’s underground missile programme is not a recent improvisation. Reports that emerged as far back as 2020 claimed an automated railway system running through cavernous tunnels, transporting ballistic missiles between assembly halls, storage vaults, and blast-door exits. What is becoming clearer now, as Operation Epic Fury enters its fourth week, is the scale of what was built and the limits of what air power alone can do against it.....

The central constraint is geological, and it has now been publicly stated by Iran itself. Former IRGC Aerospace Force commander Brigadier General Amir Ali Hajizadeh said that Iran built its missile bases across provinces and cities at a depth of 500 metres.

The most powerful weapon the United States has for destroying hardened underground targets is the GBU-57 Massive Ordnance Penetrator – a 30,000-pound bomb built specifically for this purpose. It can penetrate “approximately 60 metres of reinforced concrete or roughly 40 metres of moderate rock. Granite is harder than moderate rock. Five hundred metres is more than twelve times the weapon’s maximum penetration depth. The gap between the bomb and the tunnel is not a margin of error.”....

“IRGC did not prepare for this war by building rockets. It prepared by building railways inside mountains. The rockets are replaceable. The railways are permanent. And the granite that protects them was formed before mammals existed. The strait is 21 miles wide. The mountain is 500 metres deep. And the railway inside it is still delivering missiles to the surface,” he added.

Link to tweet

Iran has continued to fire ballistic missiles throughout Operation Epic Fury, including the attempted strike on the joint US-UK base at Diego Garcia. Trump has said the operation is running weeks ahead of schedule and that Iran’s military is finished. The satellite imagery and the institutional assessments tell a more complicated story: one in which the visible war, fought above ground, has made genuine progress, and the invisible war, fought half a kilometre underground, has barely begun.

There is a reason why only one-third of Iran's missiles have been destroyed. Iran has been preparing for these attacks for decades. Iran's missile facilities are beyond reach of bunker buster bombs and there is no practical way without a very large number of troops to take out these missies.

[NickB79]

5. Iran denies they launched these missiles, FYI

https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2026/3/23/iran-denies-targeting-us-uk-diego-garcia-airbase-claims-false-flag-attack

Iran has denied targeting a joint military base of the United States and the United Kingdom on the Indian Ocean island of Diego Garcia with missiles, dismissing the claim as an “Israeli false flag” attack.

Ministry of Foreign Affairs spokesman Esmaeil Baghaei said on Monday that the accusations reflected a pattern of “disinformation” after NATO Secretary-General Mark Rutte said the alliance could not confirm Israel’s claim that the projectiles used were Iranian intercontinental ballistic missiles.