{"id":487985,"date":"2026-03-21T17:38:11","date_gmt":"2026-03-21T17:38:11","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/487985\/"},"modified":"2026-03-21T17:38:11","modified_gmt":"2026-03-21T17:38:11","slug":"uk-confirms-iran-unsuccessfully-targeted-diego-garcia-base-politico","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/487985\/","title":{"rendered":"UK confirms Iran unsuccessfully targeted Diego Garcia base \u2013 POLITICO"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>U.K. Royal Air Force jets and other British military assets are &#8220;continuing to defend our people and personnel&#8221; in the region, as the U.K. has also given permission for the U.S. to use British bases for &#8220;specific and limited&#8221; defensive operations, they said. <\/p>\n<p>Iran&#8217;s targeting of Diego Garcia occurred before the U.K. <a href=\"https:\/\/www.gov.uk\/government\/news\/statement-on-the-conflict-in-the-middle-east-20-march-2026\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\">on Friday<\/a> confirmed that U.S. use of its bases includes defensive operations against &#8220;missile sites and capabilities being used to attack ships in the Strait of Hormuz.&#8221; The access to U.K. bases has been granted for RAF Fairford in the U.K. and Diego Garcia.<\/p>\n<p>Israel and Iran launched <a href=\"https:\/\/www.politico.eu\/article\/israel-iran-launch-fresh-attacks-donald-trump-considers-winding-down-middle-east-operations\/\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">fresh attacks<\/a> on each other on Saturday, the latest in a string of attacks since the U.S. and Israel launched strikes on Tehran in late February.<\/p>\n<p>The U.S. is <a href=\"https:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/2026\/03\/20\/world\/middleeast\/us-marines-persian-gulf-iran-deploy.html\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener nofollow\">sending thousands more Marines<\/a>\u00a0to the Middle East, according to\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/www.reuters.com\/world\/middle-east\/israel-attacks-tehran-beirut-us-sends-marines-middle-east-2026-03-21\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener nofollow\">media reports<\/a>, even as U.S. President Donald Trump\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/truthsocial.com\/@realDonaldTrump\/posts\/116263563453969628\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener nofollow\">broached &#8220;winding down&#8221;<\/a>\u00a0American military operations in the region.\u00a0<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"U.K. Royal Air Force jets and other British military assets are &#8220;continuing to defend our people and personnel&#8221;&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":487986,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[140,141,59,57,58,585,9084,3714,632,151,152,50,56,54,158,55],"class_list":["post-487985","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-united-kingdom","tag-defense","tag-donald-trump","tag-gb","tag-great-britain","tag-greatbritain","tag-iran","tag-israel","tag-media","tag-middle-east","tag-military","tag-missiles","tag-news","tag-uk","tag-united-kingdom","tag-united-states","tag-unitedkingdom"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/487985","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=487985"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/487985\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/487986"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=487985"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=487985"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=487985"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}