Iran has fired two ballistic missiles at the U.S. base on the island Diego Garcia in the Indian Ocean. The distance between Iran and Diego Garcia is about 4,000 kilometer. Officially Iran has been committed to not possess missiles with a range of more than 2,000 kilometer. Did it deceive the global public about their range?
No. In October 2025, after USrael had attacked Iran in the 12 day war, the Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei had lifted the missiles restriction he had previously imposed. Iran’s longest distance missile, the Khorramshahr-4, has a range of about 2,000 kilometer when fitted with its regular 1.8 metric ton warhead. But, like any missile, it will fly further if one reduces its payload. Fitted with a 500 kg warhead a range of 4,000 kilometer becomes possible. Its effect on a target will however become less severe which in the end defeats its purpose.
Of the two missiles Iran fired against Diego Garcia one is said to have failed in mid flight while a second one was claimed to have been shut down by a U.S. Navy SM-3 air defense missile. That a U.S. Navy vessel near Diego Garcia was on alarm and ready to fire its air defenses tells us that the U.S. was already expecting such long range shots.
With the demonstration of a 4,000 range launch from Iran many other U.S. and U.S. allies’ bases are now on notice that they can become Iran’s targets. The launch against Diego Garcia was likely made to send that message.
The U.S. Treasury has now indeed, as previously hinted, lifted sanction on Iranian oil in floating storage. The Treasury had claimed that Iran had 140 million barrels of crude available that could be released to sooth the markets. Iran however says that it no oil in storage. The Treasury waver will thus not lead to the release of any additional oil. Some future traders may well have fallen for the Treasury’s trickery but the real market squeeze will continue.
Former ambassador for the UK Craig Murray is onto something when he asserts that Trump’s plan is, and was all along, to utterly destroy and defeat Iran:
The attack on Iran was always planned by Trump. He was not “bounced into it” by Israel. It had been in gestation for months. That fact had been held within a very tight circle to avoid both political opposition and institutional opposition from the US military and intelligence community.
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Trump’s naval blockade of Venezuela’s oil has secured a US monopoly of its sale and distribution. As with Iraq, only US-approved contractors can buy the oil and payments are made to a Trump-controlled account in Qatar, from which revenue is given to the Venezuelan government entirely at Trump’s discretion.This audacious imperialist grab of the world’s largest oil reserve further insulated the USA against the effects of the forthcoming closure of the Strait of Hormuz.
Again, the narrative is being spun that Trump did not foresee the closure of the Strait by Iran. That is plainly a nonsense – every commentary on a potential Iran war for half a century has focused on the Strait of Hormuz. The only possible explanation is that Trump does not mind the closure.
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Trump’s thrashing about to articulate objectives for the war in Iran is performative, a blind to cover his true and steadfast objective – simply the annihilation of Iran as a functioning state, the infliction of the maximum amount of death and infrastructural damage, the reduction of Iran to the condition of Libya.
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Destruction of Iran on the scale envisaged will take years of hard pounding. Again, it is planned – you don’t ask Congress for an installment of $200 billion for a war you plan to wrap up in a month. Again, Trump’s taunts about having already won, objectives being achieved and about possibly finishing soon, are all just smoke and mirrors. The scale and horror of what is planned for Iran has to be obfuscated to limit a public revulsion that would be echoed in parts of the state apparatus.Netanyahu yesterday revealed an interesting part of the endgame – construction of an oil pipeline that brings Iran’s oil out to be shipped from a Mediterranean terminal in Israel. That is a breathtakingly audacious plan, but absolutely aligns with Netanyahu’s and Trump’s actions.
Let me encourage you to read Murray’s full argument. While there are still real world aspects that may argue against his theory I find it convincing.
The only defense Iran has against such a plan is to utterly trash the global markets by removing as much hydrocarbons from them as possible. That will, in theory, lead the world to squeeze the U.S. and Israel into changing their course.
But can outer pressure, asides from being at a nuclear level, have any real influence on Donald Trump?