Terrifying new map shows every country Iran’s missiles could hit – including UK

A terrifying new map has revealed an astonishing number of countries that Iran could target after their missiles’ “true” range was revealed.

Two rockets fired by Iran on Saturday were reportedly aimed at the joint British-American military base on the island of Diego Garcia in the Indian Ocean. Neither of the weapons actually struck their target – one was intercepted by anti-missile defences while still in flight, while the other apparently suffered a technical failure and fell harmlessly into the ocean.

But the very act of targeting the base – some 4,000 kilometres (2,500 miles) away from Iran – has forced defence chiefs to radically re-evaluate the potential range of Iran’s ballistic missile stockpile.

A spokesperson from the Israeli Defence Force [IDF] has said that the maximum effective range of Iran’s missiles is now thought to be 2,485 miles. Assuming the IDF’s analysis is accurate, a weapon fired from Bakhtaran Missile Base, one of Iran’s most westerly missile launch bases, could potentially reach targets across much of Europe,

With this new reassessment of Iran’s missile capabilities, a heavily-populated swathe of the UK mainland – including cities such as London, Cambridge and Norwich, is now potentially under threat.

Maps have now revealed the sheer number of countries in Iran’s firing line. As well as the UK, most of mainland Europe are at risk. In fact, only Spain and Portugal appear to be unscathed. North-eastern Africa could also be targeted as well as the likes of India and Pakistan.

British military assets are now being seen as legitimate targets by the Iranians. It comes after the Pentagon was given permission to use both the Diego Garcia base and the facilities of RAF Fairford in Gloucestershire for attacks on Iranian “missile sites and capabilities being used to attack ships in the Strait of Hormuz.”

Eyal Zamir, the IDF’s Chief of the General Staff, warned that the missiles – believed to be Iran’s Khorramshahr-4 type – could deliver a devastating strike on several major European cities: “Their range reaches European capitals — Berlin, Paris and Rome are all within direct threat range.”

Using a lighter warhead could increase the missiles’ range considerably, Dr Sidharth Kaushal, a senior ­research fellow at the Royal United Services Institute (Rusi) told The Times.

He added that any potential missile launched towards the UK mainland would not only be greatly limited in payload, but would also have vey limited accuracy: “A missile fired over 4,000km likely has a pretty high circular error probable, which means you would need quite a few to strike anything specific. The lighter payload also means that one would be trading impact for range.

“So even though it is theoretically possible [to hit Britain], this would be a case of firing a limited capability over a well-defended trajectory with a small and ­inaccurate payload.”

Experts stress that even if Iran were to launch missiles against British targets, they would almost certainly be intercepted long before entering UK airspace.

Matthew Savill, director of ­military sciences at Rusi, said: “If launched towards the UK, this is what Nato’s BMD [Nato’s Ballistic Missile Defence system] is designed for. The UK isn’t actually defenceless against a threat launched from Iran.”

The BMD system consists of two land bases – on in Poland and the other in Romania – as well as four US Navy Arleigh Burke-class destroyers based in Spain.

In the firing line

There are now over 50 countries that are considered to be technically within range of Iran’s missiles although there is only a small possinbility of attacks on a majority of them, for example China and Libya who are known allies of Iran. However Iran’s missiles have already fallen in countries such as Syria, where four people were killed and several others wounded after an Iranian missile struck a building in the southern Syrian city of Sweida.

• The UK
• France
• Belgium
• The Netherlands
• Germany
• Austria
• Czechia
• Hungary
• Croatia
• Serbia
• Bulgaria
• Greece
• Switzerland
• Italy
• Denmark
• Norway
• Sweden
• Finland
• Poland
• Slovakia
• Hungary
• Romania
• Moldova
• Greece
• Turkey
• Ukraine
• Belarus
• Lithuania
• Latvia
• Estonia
• Russia
• Kazakhstan
• Uzbekistan
• Turkmenistan
• Kyrgyzstan
• Afghanistan
• Pakistan
• India
• Jordan
• Saudi Arabia
• Egypt
• Iraq
• Israel
• Syria
• Lebanon
• Azerbaijan
• Georgia
• Kuwait
• Oman
• The UAE
• Libya
• Tunisia
• Mongolia
• Western China

‘No threat’ to UK

At present, there is no belief that Iran could target the UK, Steve Reed told the BBC. He stressed that there was “no specific assessment that the Iranians are targeting the UK – or even could if they wanted to”.

Responding to an IDF statement that Iran’s ballistic missile arsenal includes weapons “that can reach London, Paris or Berlin,” Mr Reed sought to reassure the public, saying: “We are perfectly capable of protecting this country and keeping this country safe, whether it’s here at home, or whether it’s our assets and nationals across the region.”

When the BBC’s Laura Kuenssberg asked him directly about the IDF’s threat assessment, he said: “There is no assessment to substantiate what’s being said.” Sir James Cleverly, Reed’s Conservative counterpart, said on the same programme that Iran was deploying “very, very long-range missiles”.

Iran’s foreign minister Abbas Araghchi has said that the range of his country’s missiles had been deliberately limited to 2,000km (about 1,200 miles) because “we don’t want to be felt as a threat by anybody else in the world”.

However, shortly before triggering the joint US-Israeli strikes on Iran, Donald Trump claimed that Iran had developed missiles that could “threaten Europe” and was developing a more advanced missile that could reach the US mainland.

Israel’s Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu echoed his words, insisting that Iran had the “capacity to reach deep into Europe”.