Indian Ocean island of Diego Garcia<\/a>, which serves as a forward base for British and US military operations.<\/p>\nThe island lies approximately 2,500 miles from Iran\u2019s coast.<\/p>\n
European capitals like Paris, Rome and Berlin lie within similar range.<\/p>\n
If Iran\u2019s missiles can reach Diego Garcia, they can just as easily reach the Champs-\u00c9lys\u00e9es.<\/p>\n
Meanwhile, CIA Director John Ratcliffe recently told the Senate Intelligence Committee that \u201cif left unimpeded,\u201d Iran\u2019s regime would eventually \u201chave the ability to range missiles to the continental US.\u201d<\/p>\n
Any truce that leaves Iran\u2019s missile program intact will leave Iran\u2019s Arab neighbors exposed to Tehran\u2019s projectiles, place further strain on Israel\u2019s air defenses \u2014 and risk the American homeland itself.<\/p>\n
And if Tehran succeeds in maintaining control over its stock of enriched uranium, or successfully develops new underground enrichment facilities, the regime \u2014 rooted now more than ever in its brutal Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps \u2014 will redouble its efforts to equip its missiles, even supposedly \u201cdefensive\u201d ones, with nuclear warheads.<\/p>\n
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Highly intrusive inspections will be required to make sure the regime has abandoned its nuclear program.<\/p>\n
When it comes to Iran\u2019s missile program, equally strict monitoring will be necessary \u2014 along with diplomatic and military measures to suffocate further missile development.<\/p>\n
That means all missiles and launching systems will need to be accounted for and destroyed.<\/p>\n
It means that US and European sanctions on missile entities \u2014 especially Revolutionary Guard-linked aerospace firms, procurement networks and front companies \u2014 will need to be expanded rather than traded away in negotiations.<\/p>\n
The missile arsenals held by Hezbollah, Hamas, the Houthis and Iraqi Shiite militias, effectively an extension of Iran\u2019s own missile force, must be subject to the same stringent measures.<\/p>\n
The Revolutionary Guard remains determined to deliver on its March 5 threat that \u201cKhorramshahr moments are on the horizon\u201d \u2014 referring to the Khorramshahr-4 missile, which can travel up to 1,900 miles carrying a hefty 4,400-pound payload.<\/p>\n
If a truce with Tehran comes to fruition, it\u2019s na\u00efve to assume that the battered regime will focus on rebuilding civilian infrastructure at the expense of its missile program.<\/p>\n
Holding such hope is to fundamentally misunderstand the nature of the IRGC.<\/p>\n
The attack on Arad tells its leaders that breaking Israel\u2019s air defenses and pummeling the Gulf countries into submission with missile barrages is an attainable goal.<\/p>\n
If Trump wants this war to be the last one waged against the Guard-dominated regime, there can be no more talk of permitting missiles in the name of \u201cself-defense.\u201d<\/p>\n
Iran has a powerful incentive to hunker down until Trump departs the White House less than three years from now.<\/p>\n
And not even the most pacific future administration in Washington, guided by remorse over the current war, would be able to ignore the implications of an Iran that has weaponized its enriched uranium and revived its missile-production capabilities.<\/p>\n
By then, however, it would be too late: Iran would have a nuclear-warhead-carrying intercontinental ballistic missile that could strike the American homeland.<\/p>\n
That\u2019s why Trump needs to continue military operations until Iran\u2019s entire missile infrastructure is destroyed.<\/p>\n
Mark\u00a0Dubowitz\u00a0is chief executive of the Foundation for Defense of Democracies and the presenter of\u00a0\u201cThe Iran Breakdown\u201d<\/a>\u00a0podcast. Ben Cohen is a research fellow at FDD.\u00a0<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Four weeks after the United States and Israel launched their combined assault on Iran\u2019s clerical regime, the war…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":545322,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[18],"tags":[23,12,801,68162,3,226774,1767,243352,21,19,22,20,25,24,3439],"class_list":["post-545321","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-united-states","tag-america","tag-donald-trump","tag-iran","tag-missiles","tag-news","tag-operation-epic-fury","tag-opinion","tag-peace-talks","tag-united-states","tag-united-states-of-america","tag-unitedstates","tag-unitedstatesofamerica","tag-us","tag-usa","tag-weapons"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/545321","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=545321"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/545321\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/545322"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=545321"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=545321"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=545321"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}