European Leaders Now Know Trump Was Right: Iran Was an Imminent Global Threat
Iran’s failed strike on Diego Garcia exposed the truth: Tehran’s long-range ambitions were real all along—and Europe ignored the warning until it was too late.
March 20, 2026, marked a turning point in the 2026 Iran war, when Iran launched two intermediate-range ballistic missiles at the joint U.K.–U.S. military base on Diego Garcia, a remote island in the Indian Ocean. Although both missiles failed to reach their target—one malfunctioned in flight, while the other was successfully intercepted—the attack sent shockwaves through Western Europe.
This missile proved that the late Iranian Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei had lied for years about the true range of Iran’s missile arsenal. Khamenei claimed Iran’s missiles could not threaten beyond the Middle East and their range had been limited to 2,000 kilometers. The attempted strike on Diego Garcia—more than 4,000 kilometers from Iran—proved Iran’s leadership was actually building missiles with far greater ranges capable of striking deep into Europe and hitting major cities like London and Paris.
The missile attack also forced European leaders to accept two broader realities: first, that because this was more evidence that Iranian leaders lie constantly, Khamenei’s so-called “fatwa” prohibiting Iran from developing nuclear weapons was also a lie; and second, that President Trump’s justification for launching the 2026 Iran War—that Iran posed an imminent global threat—had been right all along.
European leaders were in denial about reports over the past 15 years of major advances in the range and sophistication of Iran’s missile arsenal because they foolishly believed Khamenei had capped missile ranges at 2,000 km. This included the advanced Khorramshahr-4 medium-range missile with an estimated range of 2,000–3,000 km.
Europe also largely overlooked the implications of Iran’s multi-stage rocket tests, which it claimed were space-launch vehicles but many experts assessed were actually tests to develop long-range ballistic missiles, including ICBMs. Iran’s supposed space-launch rockets, such as the two-stage Simorgh and three-stage Zuljanah, have been estimated to have ranges of 4,000–6,000 km. (London is about 4,000 km from western Iran.)
Leaders in the U.K., France, and other Western European states now realize their cities likely are in range of Iranian ballistic missiles, and they lack adequate missile defenses to protect them.
This concern is heightened by Iran’s recent missile barrages against eight Middle Eastern countries, as well as Turkey, Azerbaijan, and Cyprus, over the past three weeks. These attacks suggest Iran had pre-positioned large numbers of missiles across the region. Officials in London and Paris are now left to question whether similar long-range missiles might already be positioned to threaten European targets.
Trump’s contention that Iran’s nuclear weapons program was an imminent threat is also now harder for European leaders to deny after the missile attack on Diego Garcia.
For years, European leaders and the global foreign policy establishment dismissed the threat from Iran’s nuclear weapons program because of Khamenei’s fatwa barring an Iranian nuclear bomb, claims by U.S. intelligence agencies that Iran’s nuclear program was halted in 2003, and repeated promises by Iranian officials that their government had not decided to use their growing nuclear expertise and infrastructure to produce nuclear weapons.
European leaders also joined Democrat politicians in claiming that Tehran had complied with President Obama’s 2015 nuclear deal with Iran, the JCPOA, and that increased threats from Iran’s nuclear program over the past eight years were because President Trump withdrew from this agreement in 2018.
Iran’s lies about its missile ranges accentuate the fact that it has also been lying about its nuclear weapons program for years. This was obvious to anyone who looked at the facts.
- For example, the Iran Nuclear Archive, a collection of more than 100,000 secret Iranian documents and files on its nuclear weapons program that was stolen from Iran by Israel in 2018, proved that Iran’s nuclear weapons program continued after 2003 and involved a systematic effort to conceal nuclear weapons-related activities from IAEA inspectors. The archive also confirmed massive Iranian cheating on the JCPOA.
- Iran faced six formal censures from the IAEA Board of Governors between 2020 and 2025 for failing to cooperate with investigations into undeclared nuclear sites.
- And finally, Iran’s rapid rollout of advanced centrifuges in 2021, enabling enrichment to near-weapons-grade levels of 60 percent U-235, suggested that development of this technology had been underway covertly for years—well before Trump withdrew from the JCPOA in 2018.
Most European leaders ignored these facts and refused to support the 12-Day War against Iran and were more opposed to the 2026 Iran War, claiming these military actions violated international law, were not approved by the UN Security Council, or that Iran did not pose an imminent threat to international security.
That position has now shifted. After Iran’s missile barrages across the Middle East, its closure of the Strait of Hormuz, and the exposure of its long-range ballistic missile capabilities, European capitals are increasingly concerned about direct threats to their security and economies. They are coming to terms with the reality that President Trump was right: Iran represented a serious and imminent danger.
It is time for European leaders to move beyond denial and take concrete action. Europe should now stand with the United States and Israel in a coordinated effort to neutralize the threat from Iran’s regime—and help create conditions for the Iranian people to reclaim their country.
Fred Fleitz previously served as National Security Council chief of staff, a CIA analyst, and a House Intelligence Committee staff member. He is the vice chair of the America First Policy Institute’s Center for American Security. He is the author of “North Korea, Nuclear Brinkmanship, and the Oval Office,” to be released by Texas A&M Press on April 7, 2026.
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