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”.
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 airforce 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.
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”.
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