The Financial Times reported this week, citing two people described as close to the Iranian leadership and specifically to the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, that Tehran has been assessing options for striking American military sites outside the Middle East should Donald Trump order a fresh escalation of the war. Among the sites reportedly considered were a base in Cyprus, fiber-optic cables running beneath the Strait of Hormuz, and the Bezmer air base in southeastern Bulgaria, where American KC-135 tanker aircraft have been stationed since the end of July. For a public that has spent the past three weeks being told there is no direct threat to the country, seeing Bulgaria named in a British newspaper alongside the phrase "potential target" was always going to land badly, and it has.
Until now the Iranian pressure on Sofia took the form of diplomatic notes and public warnings, of the kind Foreign Ministry spokesman Esmaeil Baghaei issued in late July when he said that any country providing bases or logistical support for aggression against Iran would share responsibility for it. That was a general warning aimed at a category of countries. What the Financial Times describes is Bulgaria appearing by name in Iranian internal deliberations, which is a different order of information even if the practical distance to an actual attack remains considerable.
