Aalimi Nation · International Desk | Tehran / London
Iran has considered striking United States military assets in Europe if President Donald Trump escalates the war, the Financial Times reported on Wednesday, citing two people close to the Iranian government.
According to the report, Iranian forces have assessed potential attacks on American assets in south-eastern Europe, including in Bulgaria. Cyprus was also named by one of the sources as a possible target in the event of a renewed American offensive. Separately, Iranian planners have examined the option of severing subsea fibre-optic cables in the Strait of Hormuz should the conflict intensify.
The reporting describes options under consideration rather than decisions taken. But it marks a significant shift in the declared scope of Iranian planning: from retaliation confined to US forces and facilities in the Middle East, to raising the cost of American operations at targets thousands of kilometres from the theatre.
Why Bulgaria
Sofia's decision in July placed it on Tehran's list.
Bulgaria's parliament authorised the temporary deployment of up to eight US KC-135 aerial-refuelling aircraft and as many as 250 American personnel at Bezmer Air Base, for a period running from late July into October. The first two aircraft arrived on 31 July. Refuelling tankers are not strike aircraft, but they are what allows strike aircraft to reach distant targets and return which is precisely why they alter a base's strategic value.
Iran objected through diplomatic channels before the deployment began. Its embassy in Sofia delivered a formal note, and Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi publicly urged Bulgaria to reconsider, characterising the decision as facilitating aggression against Iran.
The position has been stated repeatedly by Iran's Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps: any base used to launch an attack on Iranian territory will be treated as a legitimate target.
Why Cyprus
The island hosts British sovereign base areas, among them RAF Akrotiri, one of the most heavily used Western military facilities in the eastern Mediterranean.
Akrotiri was struck in March by a Shahed-type drone of Iranian manufacture, launched from Lebanon; two further drones heading for the base were intercepted. Damage was limited. Cypriot officials attributed the attack to Hezbollah rather than to Iran directly — a distinction that matters legally and politically, and one that also illustrates how Tehran can reach European territory without firing from Iranian soil.
The message read into Jordan
The FT's sources pointed to July's attack on a US base in Jordan, in which three American service members were killed, as evidence of improving Iranian long-range precision — and as a signal aimed at Europe.
One of the sources put it in these terms: "This was also a message to Europe: it can receive missiles, so it should know where it should stand in this war." The same source warned that "a very big mistake, such as hitting our infrastructure, could make the war go beyond the region and reach Europe."
Another said Tehran would place no limits on its response to a renewed American attack.
What Iran can actually reach
Capability and intention are separate questions, and the analysts are more measured than the sources.
Sidharth Kaushal of the Royal United Services Institute in London described the threat to European targets as "real, but limited". Iranian medium-range ballistic missiles could reach US assets in southern and south-eastern Europe, he said, but accuracy and effectiveness fall away considerably at the outer edge of their range, and Tehran's stock of longer-range systems is finite.
That assessment cuts both ways. It suggests Iran is unlikely to conduct a sustained campaign against European territory. It does not rule out a single demonstrative strike which, against a NATO member, would be the more consequential act.
The cables beneath the strait
The reported interest in subsea fibre-optic cables deserves attention precisely because it is the least dramatic item on the list.
The cables running through the Gulf and the Strait of Hormuz carry enormous volumes of international data traffic financial transactions, corporate networks, ordinary internet service across South Asia, the Gulf and beyond. Damaging them would kill nobody. It would be difficult to attribute with certainty. And it would impose costs measured in weeks of disruption across economies with no involvement in the war, India's among them.
For a state seeking leverage below the threshold that triggers a full military response, that combination is the attraction.
Diplomacy at a standstill
The disclosures land in a vacuum where negotiations should be.
Trump said on Tuesday that there were no talks or conversations under way or scheduled with Iran, and that the naval blockade of Iranian ports remained in full force. His statement came a day after his envoy Jared Kushner had described contacts with parts of the Iranian government as unusually robust a contradiction neither man has explained. Tehran, for its part, maintains that the Strait of Hormuz will not return to normal operation until Washington honours commitments made in the June memorandum.
The Islamabad memorandum, signed in June to end the war and open a path to a broader settlement, has since broken down amid mutual accusations of violation.
Oil markets have priced the deterioration accordingly, with Brent rising again on Wednesday towards $92 a barrel as traders weighed the prospect of prolonged disruption.
The real risk
The danger is not that Iranian missiles are about to fall on Sofia or Limassol. On the evidence available, that remains an option examined rather than a plan adopted.
The danger is structural. A single strike on a facility in a NATO member state would confront European governments with decisions they have spent this entire war trying to avoid, and would test an alliance commitment that has never been invoked in these circumstances. Escalation of that kind does not require anyone to intend it. It requires only one miscalculation while the diplomatic channel is closed.
Which is why the question that matters is the narrowest one: whether Washington and Tehran can restore a working channel before the next military decision is taken.
This report is based on reporting by the Financial Times, whose sources are unnamed people close to the Iranian government, together with statements from Bulgarian, Cypriot and Iranian officials. Claims about potential Iranian targets are attributed to those sources and do not indicate that Iran has decided to carry out such attacks.
