For years, Western governments’ policy toward Iran concentrated on one objective: preventing that country from acquiring a nuclear weapon. Diplomacy revolved around enrichment levels, centrifuges, and inspections under the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action. Sanctions were calibrated to nuclear benchmarks. Political capital was spent defending or dismantling the deal. But that singular focus created a strategic blind spot.
While the world debated uranium stockpiles and enrichment procedures, Iran steadily expanded and refined one of the largest ballistic missile programs in the world. Today, its long-range missile capabilities are a threat not only to regional rivals, but to Europe—and therefore to the United States and Canada through their shared obligations under North Atlantic Treaty.
The Strategic Mistake
The West’s treatment of the nuclear file as the existential issue underestimated the strategic significance of delivery systems. Prior to the current fighting Iran possessed a diverse arsenal of short-, medium-, and longer-range ballistic missiles. The Khorramshahr missile has been assessed to reach approximately 3,000 kilometres, placing all of eastern, most of central, and even parts of western Europe quite literally under the Iranian gun. With further technological development—or with forward deployment through partners or proxies—that reach could well have extended as far as Europe’s Atlantic coast.
The fact is that missiles matter even without nuclear warheads. Precision-guided conventional ballistic missiles can strike infrastructure, military bases, ports, airfields, and population centres with devastating effect. Countries that master medium-range ballistic missile technology possess much of the industrial and engineering foundation needed to pursue intermediate-range or intercontinental systems. Whether Iran chose to cross that threshold was a political decision — not a technical one.
Ballistic missiles were never meaningfully restricted under the JCPOA framework because western policy assumed that constraining enrichment automatically reduced the strategic threat. The result was a compartmentalized approach: nuclear limits on one track, missile development on another. That separation now looks shortsighted.
Europe’s Exposure — and NATO’s
Ballistic missiles are at the heart of modern deterrence, but deterrence can also feed a policy of coercion. This was especially so given the intransigence of Iran’s rulers and their demonstrated willingness to use weapons at their disposal to advance their policy objectives.
By allowing missile development to proceed largely outside the central diplomatic framework, Western governments effectively permitted Iran to acquire the very delivery systems that made a nuclear breakout so dangerous, but that could also be used with other payloads, both conventional and non-conventional. Even if Iran never built a nuclear weapon, a large and improving long-range missile force would have altered NATO’s security calculations, forcing greater spending on missile defence, complicating escalation dynamics, and increasing the risk that regional conflicts could spill into broader confrontation.
What This Means for the U.S. and Canada
Whether launched directly or transferred to an allied power, if Iranian missiles were used against NATO territory, the consequences would not be confined to the European continent. Under Article 5 of the North Atlantic Treaty, an armed attack against one member is considered an attack against all. That includes the United States and Canada.
For Washington, this is not theoretical. The United States is both NATO’s backbone and a direct target of Iranian strategic messaging. American forces are deployed across Europe and U.S. missile defence systems and personnel are integral to NATO architecture. Any ballistic strike on a European ally would immediately engage American military assets.
Similarly for Ottawa, the risk is not limited to alliance obligations. Canada’s enhanced Forward Presence in Latvia, its contributions to NATO air policing, and its deep integration with allied command structures mean that a European crisis would also automatically involve Canadian personnel as well.
Iran’s ballistic missile program represented more than a regional threat. As is evident from its indiscriminate and unprovoked attack on its neighbours, Iran already had the power—and the will—to strike anywhere in the Middle East with its current arsenal. Working to extend the reach of those missiles further signaled a clear intent to project that power—and influence—beyond the region, a serious development even without nuclear capability.
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