London could be within range of an Iranian missile strike, US Secretary of Defence Pete Hegseth has warned, as the Trump administration continues to put pressure on the UK to join the war.
He emphasised the threat posed by Tehran at a White House cabinet meeting after two intermediate-range ballistic missiles were fired last Friday at Diego Garcia, a joint US-UK military base in the Indian Ocean.
While the missiles fell short of their intended target, the incident raised alarm about the threat the Islamic Republic poses to the UK itself.
Without explicitly naming Diego Garcia, Hegseth said: ‘Two days ago they (Iran) shot two failed missiles on a target 4,000km away. For years, they told the world that their missiles could only range two (thousand) kilometres. Surprise. Yet again, Iran lie.’
He continued: ‘And to the world. I say London is 4,000km from Iran. Washington DC is 3,300km from Venezuela, another country President Trump did something about, partnered for a long time with Iran.
‘So you’re telling us that Iran is not a threat to the world or to the US, President Trump knows better.’
It comes as US President Donald Trump brutally mocked the Royal Navy’s ‘toy aircraft carriers’ after Britain was forced to borrow a German frigate.
The destroyer HMS Dragon had been due to lead a Nato mission in the North Atlantic before it was redeployed to Cyprus earlier this month in the wake of the Iran conflict.
The Navy will now lead the Nato deployment using the German frigate FGS Sachsen.
The US President subsequently took a swipe at Britain’s military, saying UK aircraft carriers ‘aren’t the best’, adding: ‘They’re toys compared to what we have.’
In response, former top brass branded the Government a ‘bloody disgrace’ while a World War Two Royal Marine veteran raged: ‘Winston Churchill would have sacked the lot of them.’
The criticism comes just weeks after the UK was bailed out by France, Greece and Italy when an Iranian drone hit RAF Akrotiri in Cyprus and not a single British ship was in position to defend it.
It took nearly a month for HMS Dragon to reach the Mediterranean island, igniting calls from Cypriots to remove British bases from their country.
Now the farce has deepened with the deployment exposing how short the UK’s defensive capabilities are.
As experts called on Labour to get a grip, Defence Secretary John Healey said he was ‘not happy with the situation’ as it ‘takes six years to build a warship’.
Yet despite repeated promises to boost defence spending, it also emerged that Nato has revised down UK defence spending in its annual report.
General Secretary Mark Rutte published figures that show the UK spent 2.31 per cent of GDP on defence last year, down from a predicted 2.4 per cent.
The report also revised down Britain’s spend for 2024 from an estimated 2.33 per cent of GDP to a final figure of 2.28 per cent.
UK military sources insist there has been no reduction and the drop is caused by changes to GDP, with other nations experiencing similar revisions.
But with anger mounting, former Nato commander General Sir Richard Shirreff told the Daily Mail the latest fiasco with FGS Sachsen ‘sends a bloody awful message’.
He said: ‘It’s deeply embarrassing and it undermines the sense of what we should be doing as a nation. The Government needs to make sacrifices. We can’t go on ploughing money willy-nilly into welfare.
‘Labour backbenchers have got to put up and shut up – and Keir Starmer needs to get a grip of his party.’
Royal Marine veteran Doug Cheshire, 102, who served on two battleships and an aircraft carrier in the Second World War, told the Daily Mail: ‘I think it’s a damn disgrace. They ought to be hauled over the coals for it. If Churchill was alive he would sack every one of them. He would be up in the air about the state of the Navy.
‘I’m angry. I’m very upset. After what we went through, for them to get us into this parlous state, to borrow from the Germans to do a job which we should be able to do – they need pinning against the wall for this.’
The German Embassy revealed this week that its frigate will ‘take over from HMS Dragon’ dressing it up as ‘an expression of the close Germany-British relationship’.
British sailors will use the ship to ‘fulfil its leadership role’, the Ministry of Defence confirmed.
It insisted that it is not uncommon for a Nato group to be commanded from an allied warship and led by Royal Navy battle staff.
But Tory MP and former Army officer Ben Obese-Jecty said it demonstrates the UK has ‘seemingly run out of ships’ and ‘Britannia no longer rules the waves’.
Former First Sea Lord, Admiral Lord West, told the Daily Mail our Nato allies ‘are noticing that we are not the power we once were’.
He said: ‘The Royal Navy was the second most powerful navy in Nato and the most powerful European navy.
‘You can’t really say that any more. Our American allies already are looking at us and saying, ‘Oh dear, this isn’t the British we’re used to’.’
The Defence Secretary was wheeled onto the airwaves yesterday to defend the latest fiasco.
Mr Healey told LBC’s Nick Ferrari: ‘The Germans have stepped in to supply their warship… that’s a sign of the strength of the Nato alliance.
‘But I’m not happy with the situation we have with British warships and that’s because it takes six years to build a warship.’
But Mr Healey stumbled over his figures when asked how many frigates are at his disposal, wrongly stating: ‘We have 17 frigates and destroyers. It’s down from 23 at the end of the last Labour government.’
In fact, that figure is 13.
An MoD spokesman said: ‘The UK is one of the top defence spenders of all Nato nations and, as these figures show, our spending has increased by almost £9billion since 2023 – a significant real terms increase.
‘We are a leader in the alliance, committing our nuclear deterrent in full to Nato and offering almost all our Armed Forces to Nato on land, in the air and at sea.
‘We are delivering the largest sustained increase in defence spending since the end of the Cold War and investing £270billion in defence across this Parliament alone.’
