Tehran’s ICBMs cannot currently reach the US, experts say, and White House has claimed its nuclear programme has been destroyed

Donald Trump’s likely casus belli for an attack on Iran – which would be the largest US intervention since the Iraq war – is fraught with contradictions, and his top advisers have been left to cover for him as the White House makes the case for intervention.

In his State of the Union address this week, Trump alleged that Iran posed a direct threat to the US and that the country was “working to build missiles that will soon reach the United States of America”. But that claim has not been backed up with evidence by the White House or the Pentagon, and US intelligence reports from just last year say that it would take Iran 10 years to develop an intercontinental ballistic missile that could reach the US.

A public US defense intelligence agency assessment from 2025 says that Iran could use its space-launch vehicles to “develop a militarily-viable ICBM by 2035 should Tehran decide to pursue the capability”. But that threat to the US homeland, as laid out in the document, pales in comparison to the ones already presented by Russia and China, as well as other hostile states like North Korea.

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