Luck is an underrated commodity in politics and conflicts. When it comes to avoiding strikes by an enemy’s long-range ballistic missiles, luck is the difference between a narrow miss and catastrophe.

The Iranian show of force in firing two of these at the Chagos archipelago base in the Indian Ocean, jointly operated by the US and UK, was a miss – one shot down, one failed in flight. Yet, it reminds us that the stakes in the Iran war are rising.  

That has prompted Israel to claim that Iran’s military programme is developing lethal weaponry able to reach London, Paris or Berlin – in essence a “told you so” message to sleepy Western leaders that one way or the other, this conflict is their business too. Back home, in the odd way of Sunday broadcast rounds, Steve Reed, an affable Housing Secretary with no first-hand knowledge of threat assessment, trundled forth to claim there was “no specific assessment that the Iranians are targeting the UK or even could, if they wanted to”.

But all weapons deployments, even the ones which fail, are exercises in future power and test potential. It would therefore be short-sighted not to see in this move to draw Chagos into the threat window as a signal that a wounded, but well-armed, regime in Tehran sees itself at war with any country which comes to the aid of the US.

War is always a........

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