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British officials have said that HMS Dragon will not leave the United Kingdom for Cyprus until next week. They added that the Type 45 destroyer, which is docked in Portsmouth Harbour, is being loaded with ammunition before sailing to the Mediterranean next week.
They denied that the lack of an earlier deployment was due to cost-saving or budgetary concerns, saying the UK was balancing competing global priorities across the Middle East and the Upper North. Two Wildcat helicopters will arrive in the region before the Dragon arrives.
Officials also said that US fighter jets are likely to begin arriving at UK bases in the coming days to launch missions over Iran.
The US has yet to use RAF Fairford or the military base on Diego Garcia following the prime minister's decision to allow defence missions to be flown from these locations.
It can also be revealed that a drone targeted at RAF Akrotiri in Cyprus was not launched from Iran, despite being a Shahed-type device commonly used by the regime in Tehran.
Officials said there had been a decline in the rate of Iranian drone and ballistic missile launches, something explained by US strikes on their launch sites.
However, there was caution that Iran could be holding back drones and missiles to support its attacks on countries in the Middle East for a longer period of time. One official estimated that if the current pace of firing continued, Iran would have several days of capacity.
Officials also suggested that defensive missile stockpiles in Middle Eastern countries could become a problem given the large number of drones and ballistic missiles being fired from Iran.
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