European nations have tried their best not to get too entangled in the US-Israeli war with Iran, now in its fourth week. They’ve been weighing whether to help unblock the Strait of Hormuz but said they would do so only after a cease-fire and preferably with a mandate from the United Nations.
But on March 21, the threat came closer to home when Iran proved that its missiles have the potential to reach European cities.
Tehran fired two ballistic missiles toward Diego Garcia — a joint American-British base in the Indian Ocean some 4,000 kilometers from Iranian territory — and officials in Brussels and beyond are suddenly taking notice.
Previously, Iran — under the reign of the late Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei — had maintained a cap to its ballistic missile range at 2,000 kilometers.
Khamenei was killed by a US-Israeli strike on Iran on February 28. And that cap that now appears gone — much to the discomfort of Europe.
Brussels is already tied up in a war closer to home: Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine, now in its fifth year. The bloc has sent more than 70 billion euros in military aid to date.
“This is for us a new dimension to the [Iran] war,” says one senior EU official speaking to RFE/RL under condition of anonymity. “Let’s be honest, our air defenses are pretty depleted right now.”
Many European nations have contributed to Kyiv’s air defenses but also realized there are considerable air-defense gaps on the Continent if it were ever tested. While possessing high-quality technology such as Patriots, SAMP/T and IRIS-T missile systems, several European defense ministries openly admit there are considerable shortages in interceptors.
Europe would also struggle against so-called saturation attacks used by Russia in Ukraine in which the air-defense systems are overwhelmed by an onslaught of jamming, cyberattacks, drones and various types of missiles.
Europe continues to be heavily reliant on the United States for long-range coverage. It is here that Iran’s potential threat to Europe comes into the picture.
Commenting on the Diego Garcia strikes, the Israeli military chief Eyal Zamir noted that “these missiles are not intended to strike Israel. Their range reaches European capitals; Berlin, Paris, and Rome are all within direct threat range.”
Speaking to RFE/RL on March 21, Michael Horowitz, an independent defense expert based in Israel, said that “Iran can no longer be seen as a threat confined to the Middle East. It is building capabilities meant to raise the costs for more distant adversaries, too” adding that “If I were the Europeans, I’d be worried.”
The British cabinet minister Steve Reed said on March 22 that one missile launched toward Diego Garcia “fell short” while another missile was “intercepted.” He also refuted Israeli claims that Europe could be targeted by adding that “there was no assessment that backed claims that Iran was planning to strike European cities with ballistic missiles, or that it had the capacity to do so.”
Iranian drones have so far been intercepted over British military bases on Cyprus whereas the NATO-member Turkey had intercepted three ballistic missiles on various occasions early in March.
While NATO hasn’t offered any new comments to RFE/RL since the Diego Garcia attacks, the military alliance instead referred to its comment about when Turkey successfully intercepted those attacks.
“So far NATO BMD (Ballistic Missile Defense) has been effective against Iranian missiles in Turkey, which is exactly what it was designed for,” Oana Lungescu, a former NATO spokeswoman and current fellow at the Royal United Services Institute for Defence and Security Studies, told RFE/RL.
A NATO official speaking to RFE/RL under the condition of anonymity also noted that the NATO BMD was designed exactly to withstand Iranian missiles — not necessarily Russian ones — when it was first tconstructed in the early 2000s and became operational in 2012.
Germany hosts the command center at its Ramstein air base, while the actual missile defenses are situated in Polish and Romanian bases. Turkey hosts a radar, and Spain has four BMD-capable ships at its Rota naval base.
But make no mistake: The NATO BMD has a significant American footprint that makes Europe reliant on US military protection.
Robert Pszczel, a former NATO official and current security expert with the Warsaw-based think tank Center for Eastern Studies, told RFE/RL that “the working presumption is that the system is operational and is doing exactly what it is supposed to do.”
“Of course, it is a special system with key elements provided by the US,” he added.
