Iran's launch of a ballistic missile for a distance of around 4,000 kilometers, shattering the 2,000 kilometer range which much of the world hoped it would stay under, likely came from using a ballistic missile using a two-stage, satellite-like launch process, former IDF air defense chief Brig.-Gen. Ran Kochav told The Jerusalem Post on Sunday.
Kochav said that the launch had "doubled the demonstrated capability overnight" of what Iran could do when it targeted the joint UK-US base at Diego Garcia in the Indian Ocean.
Echoing IDF Chief of Staff Lt.-Gen. Eyal Zamir's statement Saturday night that the additional distance probably stemmed from a launch vehicle that used multiple stages, Kochav noted that Iran has been working for years on such two-stage launch technologies to try to get satellites into space.
For years, both Israel and the US have warned that Iranian satellite tests could turn out to have dual-use elements, leading to intercontinental ballistic missiles, both conventional and nuclear.
While the Islamic Republic has always denied this possibility, it is likely that Saturday's launch has exposed a clandestine program it has operated for years for precisely such purposes.
Discussing different scenarios, Kochav, who was later also the IDF's chief spokesman, said that it was possible that the kind of missile used might be a modified USSR-era R 27 ballistic missile.
The R 27 was mainly fired by the USSR from submarines, and potentially had nuclear capabilities, but Iran could have modified it to launch from a land-based platform.
Kochav stated that North Korea has used a missile coming from a similar technological background which has proven the capability to reach around 3,000 kilometers.
If the missile came from the R 27 family background, Kochav said it would typically carry a warhead of 1.5-2 tons of explosives.
According to Kochav, one way that the missile could have had its range extended from 3,000 to 4,000 kilometers could be if a clandestine program worked on launching the missile with a much lighter warhead.
In other words, if the warhead is lighter, then the missile is lighter, and could travel farther in a shorter time using the same amount of energy and a similar launch process.
Another possibility that has been discussed is a modified Khorramshahr-4 class.
Every European country now within Iran's reach
Tehran has long claimed a maximum range of approximately 2,000 kilometers.
"From an engineering standpoint, ballistic missiles exit the atmosphere into exo-atmospheric flight before re-entering," Kochav explained further.
Moreover, he said that "trajectory physics means they [the missiles] can strike from any azimuth—north, east, west or south—rendering directional origin irrelevant. Consequently, London, Paris, Berlin and every other European capital now lie within credible Iranian reach."
Significantly, Zamir had named Paris and Berlin, but Kochav added in London as also being in range.
"This escalation fundamentally alters the threat calculus: the Middle East is no longer a geographically contained theatre. Europe must treat Iranian ballistic capability as a direct continental risk," said Kochav.
Further, he said that regarding UK defenses, the country "possesses sophisticated naval assets able to deploy SM-3 interceptors and participates in NATO integrated air and missile defense."
However, he added that "it currently lacks a dedicated, ground-based exo-atmospheric layer comparable to Germany’s operational Arrow-3 batteries (first deployed late 2025, with major expansion under contract)."
Broader NATO and EU coverage remains uneven and insufficient against saturation or long-range strikes, warned Kochav, emphasizing that, "the era of strategic complacency has ended."
To reach the US, Iran would need to extend its missiles range to 10,000 kilometers.
But if Iran has mastered a two stage launch into space, this skill is often viewed as harder to master than extending the range of an ICBM even more once two stage launch skills have been learned.
One unanswered question is how Israel missed this particularly threatening long-range missile for three weeks.
On March 16, in an extremely rare public statement, an IDF intelligence official from Unit 9900 said that Israel destroyed an Iranian base that was focused on building technologies to shoot down satellites belonging to Israel and other adversaries.
According to the officer from the IDF’s clandestine satellite intelligence division, the goal of the attack was to maintain Israel’s supremacy in space, especially regarding satellite surveillance.
The site was used to develop Iran’s Chamran 1 (a low-earth-orbit technology demonstration satellite), built by the Iranian Ministry of Defense’s electronics industries, and launched into space with a rocket built by the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) in September 2024, Iran’s state-run media reported at the time.
The report described the event as the second comparable launch to place a satellite into orbit with the rocket.
At the time, Tehran identified the satellite-carrying rocket as the Qaem-100, which the IRGC used again in January for another successful launch.
The solid-fuel, three-stage rocket reportedly put the Chamran-1 satellite, weighing 60 kilograms (132 pounds), into a 550-kilometer (340-mile) orbit.
The US intelligence community’s 2024 worldwide threat assessment warned that Iran’s development of satellite launch vehicles “would shorten the timeline” for it to develop an Intercontinental Ballistic Missile (ICBM).
The IDF on March 8 attacked the IRGC’s Aerospace Force Headquarters for launching satellites, technology with potential dual use for incorporation into future attempts to develop nuclear weapons, which could be fired long-range into space and hit the United States.
The headquarters had been used by the IRGC to promote its aerospace efforts, including the 2022 launch of the Khayyam satellite, successfully launched by Iran using a Russian Soyuz rocket from the Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan.
Given all of the energy the IDF has invested in striking aerospace facilities, it is unclear why it missed this particular missile, other than possibly Iran succeeded at concealing the missile's existence from Israel.