Iran threatens to target US-British joint base in Indian Ocean

JNS Staff

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The Diego Garcia base, which is currently hosting multiple B-2 strategic bombers, would be attacked with ballistic missiles and drones should the United States take military action against Iran, said Iranian state media.

Iranians carry an effigy of US President Donald Trump during gathering to mark the 46th anniversary of the Islamic Revolution in front of the Azadi Tower in Tehran on Feb. 10, 2025. Photo by -/AFP via Getty Images.

Iran has threatened to retaliate against the joint U.S.-U.K. naval base on Diego Garcia in the Chagos Archipelago if the United States attacks the Islamic Republic, Britain’s The Telegraph reported on Saturday.

“Iran possesses adequate weapons for such an attack from its mainland, such as newer versions of the Khorramshahr missile that have an intermediate range, and the Shahed-136B kamikaze drone with a range of 4,000 kilometers [2,485 miles],” Iranian state media warned, according to the report.

Iran’s Tasnim News Agency reported that Speaker of the Iranian Parliament Mohammad Baqer Qalibaf, addressing an Al Quds Day event on Friday, said, “The Americans themselves are aware how vulnerable they are. If they violate Iran’s border, it will be like a spark in the powder keg that would blow up the entire region. Then, their and their allies’ bases will not be safe.”

Diego Garcia, located in the middle of the Indian Ocean, is roughly 5,200 kilometers (3,200 miles) from Tehran. Multiple U.S. B-2 bombers arrived at the island last week. With a range of 6,900 miles, the B-2 is the only stealth aircraft that can carry the GBU-57, a 30,000-pound “bunker-buster” bomb known as the Massive Ordnance Penetrator, The Wall Street Journal reported on March 27.

The bombers had arrived at the island from their base in Missouri, said a spokesperson for the U.S. Strategic Command, the Journal reported.

“It’s an unusual deployment for the B-2. While Diego Garcia hosts Air Force bombers on a fairly regular basis, B-2s haven’t spent significant time there since 2020. Last August marked the first time in four years that a B-2 even touched down there when a bomber made a quick ‘hot pit’ stop with its engines running,” reported Air & Space Forces Magazine on March 27.

While a spokesman for Air Force Global Strike Command confirmed the arrival of the B-2s to the magazine, he could not comment on why they were there.

On March 17, U.S. President Donald Trump warned that any future attacks from the Yemen-based Houthis, who have targeted U.S. Naval vessels hundreds of times and wreaked havoc with global shipping channels, would be treated as a direct aggression from Iran itself. 

Iran was behind the Houthis’ attacks, he said.

“Let nobody be fooled! The hundreds of attacks being made by Houthi, the sinister mobsters and thugs based in Yemen, who are hated by the Yemeni people, all emanate from, and are created by, IRAN,” Trump wrote in a post on Truth Social.

He dismissed Iran’s claims that it had lost control of the Houthis.

“Iran has played ‘the innocent victim’ of rogue terrorists from which they’ve lost control, but they haven’t lost control,” he said. “They’re dictating every move, giving them the weapons, supplying them with money and highly sophisticated military equipment, and even, so-called, ‘intelligence.’”

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