Netanyahu: Eight Thousand Kilometres of Nonsense

Why Iran’s alleged ICBMs are a myth, and how political storytelling keeps them flying anyway.

All of my op-eds are freely available, thanks to the generous support of readers like you. Nonetheless, independent journalism takes time, research, and resources. If you find value in this piece or others I’ve published, please consider sharing it or becoming a paid subscriber. Your support, whether big or small, truly matters and helps keep this work going.

Want to buy me a coffee (or two)? Just click [here].

Every few years, someone dusts off an old script about the next great existential threat.
This month’s reboot stars Iran, the villainous mastermind supposedly building intercontinental ballistic missiles to strike the United States. In the lead role: Benjamin Netanyahu, warning with theatrical gravity that Tehran’s rockets could soon put “every American city under its atomic guns.”

If you felt a chill, that was the point.

It’s a line crafted for prime time—broad enough to terrify, specific enough to sound technical. But peel back the drama, and you find a story that makes less sense than a Cold War comic book.

Start with geography and logic. The United States already has tens of thousands of troops, ships, and air bases sitting a short hop from Iran. If Tehran ever wanted leverage over Washington, it doesn’t need to dream of hitting New York; it can threaten the assets parked practically next door. The idea that Iran would skip the low-hanging fruit—bases in the Gulf, Israel, or the Eastern Mediterranean—and instead build rockets to scare suburban Florida is like a boxer ignoring the opponent in the ring to throw a punch at the referee.

So why does Netanyahu’s claim survive? Because “intercontinental” sounds epic, and epic sells.

Let’s talk hardware. Iran’s longest-range operational missiles today are in the Shahab-3 and Ghadr families, roughly two thousand kilometres at best. That covers Israel and every U.S. base from Qatar to Turkey. To reach New York, you’d need an 8,000-kilometre missile—a machine in an entirely different class. Think about the difference between building a scooter and building a Boeing. You don’t just “add another stage.” You need new fuels, guidance computers, re-entry shielding, and a testing program that would light up every satellite in orbit.

None of that is happening. There are no multi-stage launches, no re-entry trials, and no evidence of test ranges capable of handling them. The world’s open-source trackers—who can spot a North Korean missile through cloud cover—have seen exactly zero Iranian flights that resemble an ICBM test. Even U.S. intelligence estimates, usually written in the subjunctive to allow for worst-case scenarios, say Iran could one day develop such a system with significant foreign assistance.

“Could” is doing heroic work there.

It’s polite bureaucratic code for “not currently, and maybe never.”

Yet here we are again, hearing about 8,000-kilometre “ballistic missiles under development,” as if repetition can conjure reality.

Even if we suspend disbelief and imagine Tehran suddenly fielded an ICBM tomorrow, the strategic value would still be close to zero. The first Iranian missile launched toward the U.S. would be the last thing launched from Iran. Washington’s deterrent is not a mystery; it’s a nuclear triad that guarantees retaliation on a scale no rational state would invite, which is precisely why no rational state has ever tried.

And this is where the rhetoric veers from analysis into theatre. Talk of Iranian ICBMs isn’t meant to describe a military reality—it’s meant to create a psychological one. It paints an adversary as omnipotent, collapses continents into kilometres, and turns distant anxiety into immediate fear. Once that fear takes hold, money, attention, and political obedience follow. You don’t have to prove the missile exists; you just have to make people feel it does.

It’s also an effective way to recruit allies. Tell Americans that Tehran’s rockets could arc over the Atlantic, and suddenly every Israeli strike looks like a pre-emptive act of self-defence on behalf of New York. The emotional distance between Tel Aviv and Times Square shrinks to zero.

You see how all this works: combine a tech scare (ICBMs) + moral scare (irrational enemies) + protective cloak (we are your shield). That’s how psyops are constructed. The trick is to tie American self-interest to Israel’s war aims.

If the theatre weren’t so expensive, it would almost be funny. But it’s not. Every time the myth of the Iranian ICBM re-emerges, it feeds a policy environment where escalation seems inevitable and diplomacy seems naive.

So let’s strip the story down to its bones. Iran’s longest missile can reach two thousand kilometres. To reach the U.S., it would need four times the range and ten times the technology. There’s no sign it’s anywhere close. No tests, no verified prototypes, no evidence beyond rhetoric. The difference between what exists and what’s claimed could fit comfortably on the back of a rocket schematic labeled “fiction.”

The real danger isn’t that a missile will streak across the sky; it’s that critical thinking won’t. Every time a government waves an existential threat without evidence and audiences clap on cue, another precedent is set. And the next time might involve a target closer to home.

So the next time someone solemnly announces that Tehran is “developing 8,000-kilometre missiles right now,” take a breath. Ask the boring questions. Where are the tests? Where’s the telemetry? Who benefits from the panic? If the answers are vague, you’re not hearing intelligence; you’re hearing marketing.

—Kevork Almassian is a Syrian geopolitical analyst and the founder of Syriana Analysis.