Israel has warned major cities across the globe, including London, Paris and Berlin, could all be under threat from Iranian missiles after the regime launched a strike on a British military base in the Chagos Islands.

Two ballistic missiles were fired towards Diego Garcia, a base in the Indian Ocean jointly operated by the US and the UK, on Friday night.

Sources reported that one of the missiles failed in flight, while the other was intercepted by a US warship in what is believed to be the first ever strike on the military base. 

The precise timing of the incident is as yet unknown, though the Government confirmed on Saturday that it took place before Keir Starmer gave the go-ahead to for Donald Trump to use UK-based bombers threatening the Strait of Hormuz.

Conservative Party leader Kemi Badenoch has accused the Prime Minister of a ‘cover up’ on the details and questioned why the public were not told ‘sooner’.

The IDF confirmed the Diego Garcia attack was the first time Iran had launched a long-range missile, capable of reaching a distance of around 4,000km, since the start of the war. 

‘The Iranian terrorist regime poses a global threat. Now, with missiles that can reach London, Paris or Berlin,’ it added.

Hours after the strike, Iran declared it had ‘missile dominance…over the skies of the occupied territories’ and warned its ‘new tactics and launch systems’ would leave the US and Israel ‘astonished’. 

Diego Garcia lies around 3,800km (2,360 miles) from Iran – undermining the regime’s previous assertion that its ballistic missiles could only reach 2,000 km (1,240 miles). 

Analysts believe Tehran used intermediate range ballistic missiles – or even used a space launch vehicle to enable the weapons to reach Diego Garcia.

Iran’s Simorgh space launch vehicle, for example, could offer greater range ‘at the likely cost of terminal accuracy’, said Justin Bronk, a senior research fellow at the Royal United Services Institute, a defence think-tank.

Steve Prest, a retired Royal Navy commodore, added: ‘Ballistic missiles are space rockets. They launch, they go really high up and they come down really fast. If you’ve got a space programme, you’ve got a ballistic missile programme.’

The strike on Diego Garcia took place just seven days after Israeli forces struck Iran’s main space research centre in Tehran, amid fears it was being used to ‘develop satellite attack capabilities in space’.

Experts have warned that if Iran has greater military prowess, the missile threat could now extend well beyond the Middle East and within distance of most capital cities in Western Europe.

This includes Paris, which is 4,198km (2,609 miles) from Tehran, while London lies on the ‘edge of vulnerability’ at around 4,435km (2,750 miles).

The unnerving analysis comes as General Sir Richard Barrons, who headed the UK’s Joint Forces Command between 2013 and 2016, said Iran’s power may have been ‘serially underestimated’.

The former forces chief was responding to questions over whether Trump was right to say the UK had done ‘too little and too late’ or whether opponents of the war were correct that the UK had been sucked into an American war.

He added: ‘Both could be true. War generally does not follow a script and the enemy always gets a vote and, in this case, the enemy’s vote, Iran, has been serially underestimated.

‘We are where we are – this conflict and the way it has turned out now puts British interests and those of our allies at risk and ignoring it completely is no longer appropriate even if the decisions at the start of the conflict were very different.

‘Iran and the UK have been at odds for a very long time. The Iranian regime regards the UK as an enemy and so if you are seen to participate in some fashion with this US-Israeli offensive action then they are clearly going to respond and we should not be surprised.’

General Sir Richard said the UK was helping the US to ‘apply military force’, adding: ‘We have obligations to them and we may not have thought this was a good idea at the start and we may not have wanted to get involved but now in the way this has turned out, we are involved.’

Asked about the US President’s apparently contradictory comments last night about possibly ending the war or considering the use of ground troops, he told BBC Radio 4’s Today programme that there had been a ‘mismatch’ between ‘the objectives you would like to achieve and the means you are prepared to apply to it’.

He added: ‘They [US and Israel] have got to choose between now announcing victory or stopping or if those objectives really matter to them, they are going to have to escalate it because you can’t do much more with air power so you are beginning to talk about potentially using troops.’

Doubting there would be a full scale invasion of ‘a country the size of Western Europe’, he said: ‘I don’t think anyone really conceives of an invasion and occupation of Iran but they are going to be tempted perhaps to invade Kharg Island or blockade it or attack the praetorial of the Iranian order to remove the military threat.’

Foreign affairs analyst Nawaf Al-Thani also reacted to the Diego Garcia strikes on social media, saying that a long-held assumption about Iran’s missile capability ‘has just collapsed’. 

He added: ‘For years, the accepted ceiling was around 2,000 kilometres. A ballistic missile reaching Diego Garcia suggests something in the neighbourhood of 4,000 kilometres, which pushes it out of the medium-range category and into the intermediate-range class (IRBM). That is a strategic leap.

‘The real story is not whether the missile was intercepted. It is that Iran may have demonstrated reach far beyond what much of the world believed it possessed. 

‘Paris comes into range. London moves much closer to the edge of vulnerability depending on launch point and payload. 

‘This would mean the missile threat is no longer confined to the Gulf, Israel, or parts of South Asia. It would mean the radius of deterrence, defence, and fear has expanded dramatically. 

‘If confirmed, Diego Garcia was not just a target. It was a message.’

Just hours before the missiles were fired, Iranian foreign minister Abbas Araghchi warned Sir Keir had placed British lives ‘in danger’ by consenting to Trump’s request to use B-52s and other aircraft flying out of RAF Fairford and Diego Garcia to blast Iranian missile sites blocking threatening the Strait of Hormuz. 

Posting on X, he said: ‘Vast majority of the British People do not want any part in the Israel-US war of choice on Iran. 

‘Ignoring his own People, Mr Starmer is putting British lives in danger by allowing UK bases to be used for aggression against Iran.’ 

Friday night’s action comes at the start of the third week of the conflict and coincides with a strike by US and Israeli forces against the Natanz uranium-enrichment facility on Saturday. No radioactive leaks occurred and residents near the site were not at risk, Tasnim news agency reported.

Joint forces also struck an ammunition airbase in the western Iranian city of Dezful, in Khuzestan province, as Israel pledged that attacks on Iran would ‘significantly increase’ in the coming days.

The US meanwhile reported that it has hit more than 8,000 military targets since the conflict began.

A Ministry of Defence spokesman today described Iran’s actions against the military base as a ‘threat’ to UK interests.

They said: ‘Iran’s reckless attacks, lashing out across the region and holding hostage the Strait of Hormuz, are a threat to British interests and British allies.

‘RAF jets and other UK military assets are continuing to defend our people and personnel in the region. This Government has given permission to the US to use British bases for specific and limited defensive operations.’

The Government has not however confirmed the precise timing of the strike, with Ms Badenoch urging Sir Keir to ‘come clean’ over the details. 

The Conservative leader told The Telegraph: ‘Keir Starmer has dithered and delayed on the Iran conflict from the outset.

‘Now we find out, from the media and not the Prime Minister, that the British base on Diego Garcia has been the target of Iranian missile attacks.

‘The Prime Minister needs to immediately come clean about the details of this latest attack on British troops and explain why the public weren’t informed sooner.’

Diego Garcia is strategically valuable to the US, having been used as a launchpad for operations in the Middle East for years. It has a large airfield, major fuel storage facilities, radar installations and a deep-water port. 

Prior to Iran’s strike against the base, Trump had told reporters on Friday that the US was considering ‘winding down’ military action.

The president added in his remarks that the US military was ‘getting very close’ to meeting its objectives in the war.

Secretary of State Marco Rubio rejected the comments last month and claimed that Iran was ‘certainly trying to achieve intercontinental ballistic missiles’, adding that Tehran’s nuclear capabilities were ‘headed in the pathway to one day being able to develop weapons that can reach the continental US’.

Trump blasted the UK Government while speaking to reporters outside the White House on Friday, accusing British leadership of a slow response to allow the US to use their bases.

‘It’s been a very late response from the UK. I’m surprised because the relationship is so good, but this has never happened before,’ he said.

Trump said that the UK initially did not want to allow the US to use its island for the Diego Garcia base.

Sir Keir had previously only allowed British bases to be used by the US when targeting Iranian missile launchers attacking the UK and its allies, and not for defending traffic in the Strait of Hormuz.

The Prime Minister has stood firm that the country would not be dragged into the war in Iran.

‘We will protect our people in the region,’ Sir Keir told Parliament earlier this week.

‘We will take action to defend ourselves and our allies, and we will not be drawn into the wider war.’

The US and Israel have maintained that the main motivation for military action in Iran is to prevent the development of a nuclear weapon.

The Trump administration has projected confidence since the initial strikes, with the president declaring on Friday that he thinks ‘we’ve won’.

He added that he did not want to negotiate a ceasefire because the US was ‘literally obliterating the other side’.

Trump then accused Iran of ‘clogging up’ the Strait of Hormuz, a waterway on the north coast through which about a fifth of the world’s oil passes.

‘The Hormuz Strait will have to be guarded and policed, as necessary, by other Nations who use it — The United States does not! If asked, we will help these Countries in their Hormuz efforts, but it shouldn’t be necessary once Iran’s threat is eradicated,’ Trump later wrote on Truth Social.

The president called out allies within the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (Nato) as ‘cowards’ for ‘complaining’ about high oil prices while refusing to lend military support to the US.

Iran’s strikes against Diego Garcia come as fears grew over the impact of the ‘Trumpflation’ spike in oil and gas prices that has been triggered by the conflict between the US, Israel and Iran.

Brits were urged on Friday to consider working from home and use air fryers instead of ovens to reduce demand for energy, as the Cabinet ‘condemned Iran’s expansion of its targets to include international shipping’, a No10 spokeswoman said.

‘They agreed that Iran’s reckless strikes, including on Red Ensign vessels and those of our close allies and Gulf partners, risked pushing the region further into crisis and worsening the economic impact being felt in the UK and around the world,’ they added.

‘They confirmed that the agreement for the US to use UK bases in the collective self-defence of the region includes US defensive operations to degrade the missile sites and capabilities being used to attack ships in the Strait of Hormuz.’

A fifth of global oil supplies are shipped through the Strait of Hormuz, which Iran has effectively shut since the start of the war.

That has steadily pushed oil prices higher, before a sharp rise on Thursday to nearly $118 after Iran threatened ‘full-scale economic war’ before striking Qatar’s main liquefied natural gas (LNG) facility, which suffered ‘extensive further damage’.

The chief executive of QatarEnergy said the attacks on gas facilities would take between three and five years to repair.

Drivers have already been feeling the effects at UK pumps, and experts estimate that energy bills could go up by more than a fifth when the cap next changes in July.

Experts have identified a complete list of dog breeds at risk of serious breathing problems, as they warn ‘cute’ flat faces result in a lifetime of suffering.

Researchers from the University of Cambridge said the popularised ‘squished’ faces of dogs can come at a price.

Their shortened skull shape, called brachycephaly, can cause horrific wheezing and difficulty breathing.

While previous research has focused on the three most popular ‘flat faced’ dog breeds in the UK – the Bulldog, French Bulldog and the Pug – they have now found a further 12 breeds at risk of serious issues.

This includes the Pekingese and Japanese Chin breeds, which were found to be at highest risk of a serious breathing problem called Brachycephalic Obstructive Airway Syndrome (BOAS).

Meanwhile the King Charles Spaniel, Shih Tzu, Griffon Bruxellois, Boston Terrier and the Dogue de Bordeaux are all at moderate risk of the condition.

The Staffordshire Bull terrier, Cavalier King Charles Spaniel, Chihuahua, Boxer and Affenpinscher were all found to be at mild risk.

‘BOAS exists on a spectrum,’ co–lead author Dr Fran Tomlinson, from the University of Cambridge, said. ‘Some dogs are only mildly affected, but for those at the more severe end, it can significantly reduce quality of life and become a serious welfare issue.’

For their study, the team collected data from 898 dogs encompassing 14 different breeds.

They measured the animals’ skulls and noses, bodies and necks, and checked them for symptoms of BOAS following a three–minute exercise test.

In the study they focused on the loudness and difficulty of the animals’ breathing, but other symptoms can also include loud snoring, snorting, poor heat tolerance, exercise intolerance and even vomiting.

Of the 14 breeds, two were found to not be clinically affected by the condition – the Pomeranian and the Maltese.

However, the team discovered the remaining 12 all experienced problems on some level, meaning they join the likes of Pugs and Bulldogs in a comprehensive list of the breeds at risk of BOAS.

The study, published in the journal PLOS One, also found that the condition varies considerably within each breed.

Those with a very flat face, collapsed nostrils or a ‘plump physique’ were at especially high risk, they discovered.

The researchers hope that this study will lead to more ‘flat–faced’ dogs being tested and encourage greater engagement on BOAS and other health issues faced by these breeds.

Dr Jane Ladlow, who co–led the study, said: ‘Being aware of risk factors can be useful for both breeders and prospective owners in selecting dogs which are less likely to be affected by BOAS.

‘Knowledge of these risk factors can also help to inform judges in deciding which features are detrimental to health so that factors associated with BOAS are not rewarded in the show ring, particularly as winning dogs can become popular sires.’

The team said that a breathing assessment remains the most accurate way to determine BOAS risk and therefore which dogs should be selected for breeding or whose welfare would benefit from veterinary intervention.

‘While surgery, weight management and other interventions can help affected dogs to some degree, BOAS is hereditary, and there is still much to learn about how we can reduce the risk in future generations,’ Dr Tomlinson added.

In severe cases, BOAS can result in collapse or even death, they warned.

Last week, it emerged that dog shelters are being forced to euthanise flat–faced breeds amid a ‘heartbreaking’ rise in abandonments.

The shelters warned they are being overwhelmed by the sheer number of dogs with ‘extreme conformations’, with one reporting a 500 per cent increase since 2017.

Sarah Roser, head of operations at Hope Rescue in South Wales, told the Daily Mail: ‘We’re looking at a dog where nothing is functioning as it should be, and sadly, those are the animals that sometimes we have to make a euthanasia decision for. No matter what we do medically, we’re never going to get them to a point where they’re free of pain.’

Animal welfare experts also recently revealed the 10 extreme body traits in dogs that they’re urging prospective owners to avoid.

Experts say demand for these pets has been fuelled by social media trends and celebrity pooches like Megan Thee Stallion’s French bulldog and Kendall Jenner’s Doberman.

Extreme conformations that dog owners should avoid include the Merle colouration, skin folds, a very short muzzle, eyelids that roll inwards or outwards and bulging eyes.

Prospective owners should also avoid dogs which have an underbite or overbite, an excessively short tail, bowed or curved legs, an inflexible spine or very short legs.

Dr Dan O’Neil, an animal health expert from The Royal Veterinary College who helped develop the IHA, says: ‘Extreme conformation means that we have crossed a boundary, and that the conformation is preventing the animal from living its life as a dog.

‘This is so basic, but dogs that are incapable of doing this are suffering.’