This is Dispatches with Patrick Cockburn, a subscriber-only newsletter from The i Paper. If you’d like to get this direct to your inbox, every single week, you can sign up here.

This is Dispatches with Patrick Cockburn, a subscriber-only newsletter from The i Paper. If you’d like to get this direct to your inbox, every single week, you can sign up here.

It is unsurprising that Iran considers the UK bases used by US bombers to attack the country – RAF Fairford in Gloucestershire and Diego Garcia in the Indian Ocean – to be “legitimate targets”.

Such threats might have been dismissed in the past as unrealistic bombast, but in a year when warfare in the Gulf and Ukraine has been dominated by drones, along with cruise and ballistic missiles, nations that once believed themselves safe have suddenly become vulnerable. Iran fired two missiles at Diego Garcia in March which failed in flight or were shot down, but the Iranians clearly believed they had the range to reach the island. Diego Garcia is 2,350 miles from Tehran, while London is 2,750 miles away.

Seeking to balance between not offending Donald Trump and refusing to join more fully in his war on Iran, Britain has made a fine distinction between “defensive” US bombing missions, which are allowed, and “offensive” ones, which are not. But since Iran sees itself as the victim of an unprovoked attack by the US and Israel on 28 February, the British argument about the US defending itself and its allies is unlikely to impress the Iranians.

The Iranian foreign ministry accuses the UK of being an “accomplice” in the US war, while the powerful Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) says any country which supports the US militarily “will be responsible for the consequences and repercussions”. It claimed in a statement published on the IRGC-linked Tasnim news agency website on 23 July that a US bomber based at RAF Fairford had bombed Iran two days earlier. While there is some dispute over the range of the longest-range Iranian missile, those with a reduced payload of explosives might well be able to reach the UK.

Experts play down the military effectiveness of an Iranian missile attack on the UK, but the Iran and Ukraine wars are showing that many targets previously considered safe because of their distance from the fighting are turning out to be highly vulnerable.

A further compelling reason why the Iranian threat should be taken seriously is because of a radical change in Iranian strategy. When the US and Israel attacked Iran in February, the Iranian leadership unexpectedly switched to a new – but clearly long considered – strategy of striking back hard at those countries from which the US air offensive was being launched. A hail of missiles and drones struck the........

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