U.S. ambassador to Israel Mike Huckabee said on Sunday that while the Iranian regime is weaker in the wake of the war, its ballistic missiles can now reach Europe.
“The Iranian regime is weaker than it has been in 47 years. The infliction of harm to them and the pain to them, is not something that is imagined. Their ability to produce a nuclear weapon has been greatly set back,” Huckabee told the panel of “Fox & Friends” on Fox News.
But Tehran’s missile capacity, “unfortunately, has grown”, he said. “In one year they went from being able to deliver a ballistic missile from 2,000 kilometers to over 4,100 kilometers. That puts their capacity to touch any city in most of Europe. London, Paris, Berlin, Rome. All of those cities are now in the sights of Iran,” the diplomat continued.
“How long will it be until they can launch one toward the United States?” he added.
During “Operation Epic Fury” in March, Iran launched a long-range missile at the Indian Ocean island of Diego Garcia, which houses a joint U.S.-U.K. military base.
The strike was unsuccessful, Britain’s defense ministry said at the time.
“The Iranian terrorist regime launched a long-range missile for the first time since the start of ‘Operation Roaring Lion’ that could reach a distance of ~4,000 km,” or some 2,500 miles, the Israel Defense Forces stated following the incident.
“We have been saying it: The Iranian terrorist regime poses a global threat. Now, with missiles that can reach London, Paris or Berlin,” the IDF added.
“With the limited exception of the Iberian Peninsula [in Spain and Portugal], the alliance’s territory now falls within Iran’s evolving missile engagement envelope, including systems derived from its SLV [Space Launched Vehicle] program,” Hudson Institute senior fellow Can Kasapoğlu wrote in the wake of the attack, referring to NATO.
Kasapoğlu assessed that Iran may have extended its strike distance by scaling down the payload of its Khorramshahr-4 medium-range ballistic missile to reduce impact damage. However, he noted it was more likely that an SLV such as the Ghaem-100 missile—developed under the guise of Iran’s civilian space programs—was used in the attack on Diego Garcia.
The British, French, and German governments warned in a joint letter sent to the United Nations Security Council in 2022 that the Ghaem-100 that Tehran had unveiled on Nov. 5, 2022, could be used as an intermediate-range ballistic missile, which typically reach ranges between 3,000 and 5,500 kilometers (1,860 and 3,400 miles).
“The development of the Ghaem-100 is of significant concern owing to its extensive crossover of technologies with the development of long-range ballistic missiles,” the letter read at the time, adding that it was the Islamic Revolution Guards Corps that conducted the trial using a mobile launcher.
The letter noted that equipped with a 500 kilogram warhead, the minimum required for a nuclear warhead, the Ghaem-100 “would provide Iran with a rapid route to an intermediate-range ballistic missile.”
