Tehran is reportedly planning attacks on American military targets in southeastern Europe if the conflict with the United States escalates further, a threat that two Iranian insiders say is meant to send a message well beyond the Middle East.
Iran has identified U.S. and allied military installations in Bulgaria and Cyprus as potential targets for retaliatory strikes, according to a Financial Times investigation citing two Islamic Republic insiders. The insiders described a regime that views renewed war as inevitable and believes Washington cannot be trusted to honor any peace agreement. The threat extends to subsea fiber-optic cables running through the Strait of Hormuz, infrastructure whose destruction could disrupt global communications and shipping.
The report, detailed by the Daily Mail, lands at a moment when every diplomatic off-ramp between Washington and Tehran appears closed. President Trump said Tuesday that there were "no talks or conversations going on, or scheduled" with Iran. A June memorandum of understanding between the two countries has crumbled. And Supreme Leader Ayatollah Mojtaba Khamenei last week installed a string of veteran military and security hardliners, including former Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps commander Mohsen Rezaei, in some of Iran's most powerful positions.
The combined picture is one of a regime consolidating around its most confrontational figures while openly telegraphing its willingness to widen the war into Europe.
Khamenei's decision to elevate Rezaei, a former IRGC commander, to a top security post carried an unmistakable message. Iranian experts interpreted the move as a sign that Mohammad Bagher Ghalibaf, the country's top negotiator, has been pushed to the sidelines for now.
One of the Iranian insiders put it bluntly to the Financial Times:
"If you don't reach an agreement with Ghalibaf, you have to deal with Rezaei."
The same insider framed the broader posture as a calculated show of resolve:
"The message is: 'Don't be mad, because I'm madder than you are.'"
That kind of rhetoric from regime-connected sources is not bluster for its own sake. It tracks with a series of Iranian military actions over the past six months that have steadily raised the stakes of the conflict, and the cost to American service members.
The conflict, which began in February, has already produced a grim ledger. Last month, Iran struck a U.S. base in Jordan, killing three American service members in what was described as the most precise long-range attack the regime has carried out. That attack followed months of escalation: in March, NATO air defenses intercepted multiple Iranian ballistic missiles over Turkey. The same month, a drone struck the British air base at Akrotiri in Cyprus, an attack Western officials attributed to an Iranian drone fired by regional proxy forces.
Washington has accused Tehran of launching multiple missiles at the joint U.S.-UK military base on Diego Garcia, roughly 4,000 kilometers from Iran, in the weeks after the conflict began. None reached their target, but the attempts demonstrated a willingness to project force far beyond the Middle East. The long history of Iranian attacks on American troops makes each new provocation harder to dismiss as posturing.
Douglas Barrie, an analyst at the International Institute for Strategic Studies, said the Diego Garcia attempts were revealing:
"Those strikes they attempted on Diego Garcia this year are kind of indicative that they have got weapons with ranges greater than 2,000km."
But Barrie also flagged real limits. Stockpile size remains uncertain. Accuracy degrades at longer ranges. And a failed strike, one intercepted or shot down, would carry political costs for Tehran without inflicting any damage.
"The risk is that the missiles fail or are shot down, so how would they benefit? The longer the range, the harder it is to be really accurate."
Two specific installations stand out in the Iranian calculus. Bulgaria last month approved the use of its Bezmer air base for U.S. refueling aircraft, a decision that placed a NATO ally's sovereign territory squarely in the operational chain of American military operations against Iran. Cyprus already hosts the British air base at Akrotiri, which was struck by a drone in March.
The IRGC warned the United Kingdom last month against allowing America to use British military bases, declaring that "any base that is used to launch an attack on Iranian territory will be considered a legitimate target." That warning now carries more weight given the insiders' statements about expanding the conflict into Europe.
One insider told the Financial Times that the threat was explicit and deliberate:
"This was also a message to Europe: it can receive missiles, so it should know where it should stand in this war."
A second insider echoed the point:
"Should the US go too far, Iran will defend itself at any price, go beyond the region and hit Europe too."
Sidharth Kaushal, a research fellow at the Royal United Services Institute in London, assessed the threat to European targets as "real, but limited." He noted that Iran's Shahab series missiles would struggle to do significant damage at longer ranges, and that heavier-duty missiles would carry lighter payloads at extended distances. Kaushal suggested that "it would be more fruitful for them to work through proxies", a reference to Iran's network of Shia militias in Iraq, Hezbollah in Lebanon, and the Houthis in Yemen.
That assessment is worth weighing carefully. Iran's proxy forces have already demonstrated the ability to strike targets across the region. A drone hit a British military installation in Cyprus. Missiles reached the vicinity of Diego Garcia. The question is not whether Iran can threaten Europe. It is whether Tehran's leadership calculates that doing so would advance its position, or simply accelerate its destruction.
The June memorandum of understanding was supposed to be the framework for de-escalation. It did not hold. Last month, Iran attacked ships in the Strait of Hormuz. Both sides accused each other of violating the interim deal. Tit-for-tat strikes followed. The United States reimposed a blockade on Iranian ports, and the agreement fell apart. The list of demands Iran issued for reopening the Strait of Hormuz underscored how far apart the two sides had moved.
President Trump responded to the Strait of Hormuz attacks with a pointed warning on Truth Social:
"Any time the Islamic Republic of Iran shoots at a ship in the Strait of Hormuz, whether it be by Missile, Rocket, Drone, or any other device or weapon, the United States will bomb and destroy ONE BRIDGE OR POWER PLANT, including those located next to, or in, the Capital City of Tehran."
That post came after Iranian strikes had already killed a sailor in the Strait of Hormuz, prompting the reinstatement of the naval blockade. Trump's frustration with the stalemate was evident. By Tuesday, he confirmed publicly that no negotiations were underway or scheduled.
Iran's hardliners, for their part, appear to have concluded that negotiation is a losing strategy. The insiders' statements to the Financial Times describe a faction that believes Washington will never implement a peace deal in good faith. Their preferred approach: inflict enough cost on the United States, and now, potentially, on its European allies, to force compliance.
Several critical unknowns remain. How many long-range missiles does Iran actually possess? Has any operational decision been made on the subsea cable attacks? What specific positions did Khamenei's newly appointed hardliners take beyond Rezaei's security role? And has Ghalibaf been formally replaced as lead negotiator, or merely sidelined?
The answers matter because they determine whether Iran's European threats are a bargaining tactic or an operational plan. Barrie's point about stockpile size is central: Iran may have the range to reach southeastern Europe, but the number of missiles it can commit, and the accuracy of those weapons at distance, remains an open question. The expanded U.S. strikes Trump ordered after Iran's missile attack shattered trust in the peace talks have only deepened the cycle.
What is not in doubt is the trajectory. A regime that shot down a U.S. helicopter over the Strait of Hormuz, killed three Americans in Jordan, fired missiles at Diego Garcia, and struck a British base in Cyprus is not a regime looking for an exit. It is a regime testing how far it can go before the cost becomes unbearable.
Regimes that threaten to bring war to a new continent are not sending a message about self-defense. They are telling you exactly who they are, and the only question left is whether anyone is listening.
