Turkey said NATO air defenses in the eastern Mediterranean shot the missile down, as they had with the two earlier launches.
Missiles were fired from Iran toward Turkey on March 4 and March 9; Tehran denied at the time that it had launched strikes against Turkey.
Iran and Turkey are not openly hostile and have developed closer ties in part through the Syrian civil war.
On the 13th, Turkey’s Defense Ministry posted on X that NATO air defenses had shot down an Iranian ballistic missile after it violated Turkish airspace.
The ministry warned it would “decisively take all necessary measures” against any threat to its territory or airspace.
While the ministry said the ballistic missile came from Iran, it stopped short of explicitly naming Tehran as the target of any retaliatory measures.
Since launching strikes on Israel and the United States, Iran has continued firing missiles and drones not only at Israel but also at neighboring Gulf Arab states and Jordan. Those strikes have killed more than 15 people, including migrant workers.
Iran says it is striking U.S. bases located in those Arab countries—not the countries themselves—and has demanded that those states remove U.S. military forces from the bases.
On March 12, after Iran had struck twice, the Turkish government emphasized that “the Incirlik base in the south remains a Turkish base even if foreign troops are stationed there.”
Officials framed that comment both as an explanation and as a response to Iran’s repeated warnings to target U.S. bases.
In the earlier two incidents, Tehran did not explicitly say it was targeting Turkey. But the third missile was launched the day after Turkey publicly identified the U.S. joint base in question, suggesting the strike was a deliberate attack on Turkish territory.
