Name: Iran Fires Missiles at UK-US Diego Garcia Base | BBC Newscast
Uploaded: 2026-03-22T16:29:36.000Z
Duration: 26 min 12 s
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Who would have thought that the news would be asking if an Iranian missile could go nearly 4,000 kilometers towards Diego Garcia?

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And who would have thought when what seemed like a very arcane debate about a British base that seems like in the middle of nowhere.

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Diego Garcia today is actually at the center of the headlines in the latest developments in the war in Iran.

You have been talking to sources within the government and you will reveal all in Saturday's newscast.

So we know at the moment that Iran, as part of its retaliation for the war that was being waged on it by Israel and the US has attempted to fire missiles at Diego Garcia, which is a tiny island in the middle of nowhere that is the host to British and American military assets.

We know that the attack was in the last few days.

The attack also was before the UK Said late on Friday that it would allow America to use British bases to protect the Straits of Hormuz, which Keir Starmer's critics have seen as another step down the slippery slope in Trump's war.

But crucially, that means that Iran had already tried to hit a British target many miles further than people might have thought Iran was capable of doing before Britain changed its position.

that is a reminder that this, the plans put in place for years by Iran, if attacked, were to weaponize the Straits of Hormuz, Strait of Hormuz, and

to take on bases in the region and threaten oil production, and

now, it seems, threaten military assets belonging to the United Kingdom used by the United States as well, thousands of kilometers away.

So it represents a reminder this is not Venezuela.

And President Trump has been schooled publicly, along with Benjamin Netanyahu, who wanted this to happen before Donald Trump even came to the White House, has been schooled in what years and years of defensive planning looks like from the regime in Iran.

And we should say that a bit later in the podcast, we'll be hearing from David Miliband, and

we'll talk to him about the humanitarian impact on all of this.

But today, as we record at 10 past 1, and

goodness knows what will have happened by the end of today, the focus of most of the headlines in the UK is on this attack on Diego Garcia.

And can I ask you, do you think it's important from the government's perspective to get that timeline information briefed?

It's incredibly important to the government to get this timeline briefed, which is, I think, exactly why I was told about the timeline this morning.

So what happened yesterday was the UK said, sure, President Trump, who'd been calling NATO allies cowards and also sorts of things for not helping the US protect the Straits of Hormuz in a military way.

The UK and others said, okay, you can, you can use our bases to launch attacks on missile sites in Iran that have been chucking things at the Straits of Hormuz and clogging up the world's shipping with all the implications for the oil price.

At the same time, Iran responded to that, essentially saying to the uk, ah, you're playing with fire.

They there was a very strong Iranian response to that UK decision.

So Downing street does not want it to look like the attack on Diego Garcia was a direct response to the decision that they publicized yesterday.

You've essentially got three things that happen here.

Missiles try to fall on Diego Garcia, fired by Iran, they don't make it, but

it's the first time we understand they've got an attack that far away.

Second of all, the UK after that attack says to the US yes, you can use our bases for what to some people looks like an escalation in the war.

Third thing, Iran responds and says, UK that means that you are going to be a target for us, too.

So you can see why with those three steps, Downing street does not want it to give the impression that the headlines today about Iranian missiles being thrown at a British base are a direct result of a decision that the Prime Minister and his colleagues took yesterday to give the US permission.

Also, as we sat down, I was reading from the BBC's defense correspondent.

There is chatter in the military expert circles about whether Iran does possess a missile that can travel that far.

So people have been naming the individual missiles that they know Iran has, the ballistic missiles and then questioning what we know about their technical specifications and if they could even reach, in which case you'd have to wait a bit to know more.

But you could say that the targeting is a message in itself.

But it reminds me of what you've said every week in this short war.

It's about the map and it's about the clock.

Can they file missiles that could actually be successfully targeted as far as 4,000km away?

That has not been the assumption of the sort of defense establishment so far.

Just to use the numbers, it was previously thought Iran's missiles had a range of about 2,000 kilometers.

Diego Garcia is nearly 4,000 kilometers from Iran.

So if it has secretly developed missiles that can go that far, the potentially frightening consequence of that is it means that Iran in that scenario will would have the hypothetical ability to go for targets far beyond where this war is right now being conducted.

Now, let's say take a breath as you've importantly told us, we don't know how close these missiles got, we don't know exactly what they were.

Hopefully that will all become clearer in the next couple of days.

But that's why this attempted attack on Diego Garcia has lit up the headlines this morning.

It's not just because it was a British US joint base.

The Iranians have already been going after British assets since this war began.

We know at the beginning there was a strike that went into the side of a hangar an RAF Akrotiri in Cyprus.

But the Diego Garcia attempted attack has lit up the headlines because it suggests that Iran might have better military capability than was previously thought.

A question for the youngest newscaster, which I think you could probably answer is when was a man called David Miliband the UK Foreign Secretary?

He was the Foreign Secretary in the latter years of the new Labour administration.

So I think from 2007 all the way up until the end of that period under Gordon Brown, 2010.

He is the brother of course of Ed Miliband who's on the left of the Labour government and is also of course someone who wants us to get off our fossil fuel addiction.

His brother David Miliband is a little degree towards the right of the Labour Party.

The job he's now doing is as boss of a very big organisation, the International Rescue Committee.

But also there's big news from the current Foreign Secretary.

So in order to try to find more money for defence, Yvette Cooper, the Foreign secretary is cutting 6 billion pounds from the budget for overseas aid.

That's the budget that does precisely the kind of thing that David Miliband organizes and runs now.

It gives money to aid agencies around the world.

this is one of the reasons why there's such pressure on that budget, it also goes towards paying for asylum seekers here in the uk.

So there's been a controversy about whether that budget is being well spent.

The original conception of overseas development under Tony Blair, the Department for International Development was it was much better to pump money into conflict torn or poverty restriction countries around the world to tackle problems at source to help people in need.

And that would be a help for peace and stability around the world, rather than just putting a sticking plaster on in the form of eventually trying to help deal with the products of conflicts, if you like.

But given the world we now live in, the government has again cut the aid budget.

It gives us an interesting tension, therefore, between someone like David Miliband, who's a former colleague of Yvette Cooper, former Labour politician, but

who's now dealing with the consequences of decisions that have been made by the people who are now in power here.

We have set out the reasons why you might want to listen, we hope you will, to David Miliband ON NEWSCAST and here's our chat.

The war which everyone is very anxious to see end is you as Foreign Secretary.

You had problems with a nuclear armed Iran yourself.

It's not as though Trump's wrong to say that the world's worried about a nuclear Iran.

Well, you're right that the Iranian nuclear issue is a long standing one.

We didn't have a problem with a nuclear Iran in the sense that it hadn't gone nuclear, and

they always insisted that they never would.

But you'll remember that we discovered a secret site of military development in Iran in the course of my tenure as Foreign sec.

And so the Iranian nuclear issue, the danger that Iran would become a nuclear weapons state, was certainly a very big issue.

We were, I always said, 100% committed to the diplomatic political track to resolve the nuclear issue.

The Joint Comprehensive Plan of action in 2015 before a nuclear agreement was agreed.

But of course, the American authorities, in my time and before they all looked at the military options, they all heard what the Iranians were saying about what they would do if there was any military action, and

they steered away from it precisely because they thought a.

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Iran Fires Missiles at UK-US Diego Garcia Base | BBC Newscast

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