The Turkish government said on Monday that NATO forces intercepted a second Iranian ballistic missile as it entered Turkey’s southern airspace.
Turkey repeated its warning to Iran to cease such provocations, but once again took no firm action in response to the attack.
NATO spokeswoman Allison Hart confirmed the incident on Monday and offered assurances that NATO “stands firm in its readiness to defend all allies against any threat.” Turkey is a member of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization and boasts the second-largest standing military in the alliance.
Turkey has reportedly chosen not to trigger any formal proceedings with NATO for action against Iran, but it did summon the Iranian ambassador to issue a “formal rebuke” for the latest incident.
According to Iranian state media, Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan spoke with Iranian President Masoud Pezeshkian about the attack by telephone on Monday. Iranian media also denied that Iran launched the missile.
Iran is believed to have launched its first ballistic missile against Turkey last Wednesday. The weapon was neutralized by NATO air defenses over the Mediterranean Sea, but some debris from the missile landed in Turkey’s Hatay province.
The second missile was reportedly inside Turkish airspace when it was brought down and some of its debris landed between an airbase and radar base that are utilized by U.S. and NATO forces.
Erdogan rather mildly chastised Iran for its missile attacks after a cabinet meeting on Monday, stating that his highest priority was “to keep our country away from this fire.”
“Despite our sincere warnings, steps continue to be taken that would strain Turkey’s friendship and that are extremely wrong and provocative,” he said, contrasting the current tension against Turkey’s “thousand years of neighborly and brotherly ties” with Iran.
An infographic titled “Missiles possessed by Iran” created in Ankara, Turkiye on March 6, 2026. (Murat Usubali/Anadolu via Getty Images)
“One should not engage in such behavior,” he said. “Persistence and stubbornness in wrongdoing should be avoided.”
Erdogan also boasted of Turkey’s military strength and said its forces stood ready to “repel any attack,” even though both of Iran’s attacks were intercepted by NATO forces.
Iran’s state-run Fars news agency on Sunday cited an “informed source” who admitted that Iran chose to “expand its strikes beyond military sites and facilities tied to the United States and the Israeli entity,” and is now targeting “significant US and Israeli economic and strategic interests throughout the region.”
In other words, the Iranians admitted they are deliberately targeting civilians and civilian infrastructure and feel justified in doing so because U.S. and Israeli officials supposedly “resorted to publicly threatening” the Iranian people after “failing to sway” them.
The Fars piece was accompanied by the usual threat from the terrorist Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) to “dramatically increase” its drone and missile attacks, even though Iranian attacks have actually declined steeply throughout the brief conflict.
Analyst Ryan Bohl of the RANE risk intelligence firm told Business Insider on Tuesday that one of the biggest surprises of the war has been Iran’s inability to “overwhelm Gulf Arab air defenses in ways that would be very impactful,” despite spending much of their national treasury for decades on a missile inventory that was supposed to intimidate any opponent from considering an attack on Iran.
Instead of the long-feared shower of missiles in all directions, Bohl noted that Iran’s attacks have been mostly desultory – like the two half-hearted ballistic missile strikes on Turkey – with the exception of the United Arab Emirates (UAE), which has capably handled a more sustained onslaught of Iranian missiles and drones.
Bohl and other analysts theorized that either Iran thinks it can wear down U.S., NATO, and Gulf air defenses with a steady drumbeat of underwhelming attacks, or else the Iranian military made an early decision to keep its most expensive weapons hidden. Another possibility is that Iran’s degraded and decentralized command structure lacks the authority to expose and launch the best and most carefully-hidden weapons in its arsenal.
“While the underground missile cities do pose a threat, they are facing an issue of Israeli and American warplanes hovering over them as their locations are mapped, making it harder for them to necessarily fire as often,” Bohl noted.
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