Britain has not ruled out participating in future strikes against Iranian ballistic missile launch sites, officials have indicated.
US heavy bombers are expected to reach UK bases at Diego Garcia in the Chagos Islands and Fairford in Gloucestershire in the next few days, from where they are expected to attack Iran’s underground “missile cities”.
It has also emerged that the Royal Navy destroyer HMS Dragon, which Keir Starmer promised on Tuesday would be sent to Cyprus to defend the country and UK airbases there, is not expected to be ready to set sail from Portsmouth until next week.
In a briefing, western officials did not rule out the possibility that the UK could take part in striking missile depots. “I wouldn’t rule anything out at all because we just don’t know what will happen day to day, week to week as this progresses,” one said.
Destroying Iran’s ballistic missile stockpiles and launch capabilities is one of the central goals of the joint US and Israeli bombing campaign, but many are buried below ground and hard to strike with more conventional weapons.
One option is to fly US air force B-2 or B-52 bombers armed with bunker-buster munitions from the two UK sites, and that could require additional support from the RAF beyond the simple provision of the bases.
Western officials believe that Iran has “several more days’” worth of ballistic missiles in its stockpile, if it is able to continue firing them at current rates. However, it may not be able to do so given the continuing US-Israeli attacks. Iran may also chose to conserve stocks in an effort to preserve some of its military capabilities.
Gulf states and other regional allies have fired “quite a lot” of their Patriot air defence interceptors in efforts to defend themselves, an official added. No figures were given but it was emphasised that the size of stockpiles would be a source of concern for countries coming under missile and drone attack from Iran.
That would justify an enhanced rate of attack on Iranian launch sites, an official added. “That’s why it is so important to speed up the rate at which those launches and launch sites are being targeted and destroyed,” they said.
At first the UK did not take part in the US-Israeli bombing campaign that began on Saturday with the killing of Iran’s supreme leader, Ali Khamenei. But on Sunday night Keir Starmer partly changed his mind.
The prime minister said he would allow the US to destroy Iranian missiles “at source” by flying missions from UK bases to target “their storage depots or the launchers which [are] used to fire the missiles”. It was, he added, a “specific and limited defensive purpose”.
HMS Dragon had been in dry dock for maintenance and is now in the process of having weapons loaded on. The sailing time to Cyprus is between five and seven days, meaning it may not arrive until the end of next week, nearly two weeks after RAF Akrotiri first came under attack.
A Shahed-type drone breached air defences at the base in Cyprus on Monday, causing minor damage when it crashed on the runway, even though counter-drone units were deployed on site. Two other drones were intercepted later that day.
Cypriot officials have indicated the drone that struck the runway came from an area of Lebanon controlled by Hezbollah. That has not been confirmed by the UK Ministry of Defence, though a launch from Iran has been ruled out.
