Esmaeil Baghaei denies the long-range missile assault, which may change the calculus of the conflict for US allies.
Printed On 23 Mar 2026
Iran has denied targeting a joint military base of the US and the UK on the Indian Ocean island of Diego Garcia with missiles, dismissing the declare as an “Israeli false flag” assault.
Ministry of International Affairs spokesman Esmaeil Baghaei mentioned on Monday the accusations mirrored a sample of “disinformation” after NATO Secretary-Common Mark Rutte mentioned the alliance couldn’t affirm Israel’s declare that the projectiles used have been Iranian intercontinental ballistic missiles.
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“That even the NATO Secretary Common (who’s infamously urgent Alliance members to appease the U.S. and help their unlawful conflict on Iran) declines to endorse Israel’s most up-to-date disinformation, speaks volumes: the world has grown completely exhausted with these drained and discredited ‘false flag’ storylines,” Baghaei wrote on X.
Chatting with CBS Information on Sunday, Rutte backed US President Donald Trump’s conflict on Iran, framing it as essential and urging public help. “I’ve seen the polling, however I actually hope the American folks might be with him as a result of he’s doing this to make the entire world protected,” he mentioned.
Earlier, US media shops, together with The Wall Road Journal, mentioned missiles have been launched between Thursday night time and Friday morning, however they didn’t hit the Diego Garcia base.
But when Iran was confirmed to be behind the assaults, it could imply that it possesses 4,000km-plus (about 2,500-mile) vary ballistic missiles capable of attain so far as the UK capital, London.
Earlier this month, in an interview with the US broadcaster NBC, Iranian International Minister Abbas Araghchi mentioned, “We deliberately restricted ourselves to under 2,000km [1,242 miles] of vary as a result of we don’t wish to be felt as a risk by anyone else on the earth.”
UK International Secretary Yvette Cooper slammed “reckless Iranian threats” however added that London wouldn’t be drawn right into a wider battle within the Center East.
British Housing Secretary Steve Reed mentioned on Sunday the UK had no indication that Iran supposed to – or may, even when it needed to – attain the nation with its missiles.
The UK-US navy airbase is house to almost 2,500 largely American personnel and has supported US navy operations from Vietnam to Iraq, Afghanistan and strikes on Yemen’s Houthi rebels.
Israel’s navy chief, Eyal Zamir, claimed that Iran used “a two-stage intercontinental ballistic missile with a spread of 4,000km” to focus on the US-UK base.
Israel, an in depth US ally, has lengthy mentioned Iran’s missile and nuclear programmes pose a risk and has for many years lobbied the US to intervene militarily. However successive US administrations had resisted the stress to launch navy strikes on Iran. As an alternative, Washington imposed wide-ranging sanctions on Tehran to discourage it from growing nuclear weapons.
As Washington and Tehran have been engaged in talks, Israel and the US attacked Iran about three weeks in the past, killing Supreme Chief Ayatollah Ali Khamenei. The assault got here regardless of Oman, the mediator of these talks, saying a deal had been “inside attain”.
