Iran has considered targeting US military assets in Europe if US President Donald Trump escalates the ongoing war, according to regime insiders cited by the Financial Times .
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Two people close to the Iranian regime said Iranian forces had examined targets in countries such as Bulgaria, which recently approved the use of its Bezmer air base for US refuelling aircraft.
Cyprus was also being considered as a potential target, one insider added. A British air base there was also hit by a drone in March.
Iranian forces have separately examined the possibility of attacking undersea fibre-optic cables in the Strait of Hormuz if the conflict escalates further, according to the insiders.
The threats reflect a growing conviction inside Iran's ruling circles that a return to full-scale war is inevitable. Negotiations over the strait remain stalled, and Supreme Leader Mojtaba Khamenei has recently elevated hardliners to key security and military posts, signalling a hardening of Tehran's stance. Trump said on Tuesday that "no talks or conversations" were underway with Iran.
The IRGC has already warned that "any base used to launch an attack on Iranian territory will be considered a legitimate target," a direct reference to UK bases used by the US.
One regime insider told the FT that Iran was preparing to widen the conflict if Trump followed through on previous threats to attack Iranian infrastructure. The second said Tehran would place “no limits” on its response if the US launched an attack.
"If the US goes too far, Iran will defend itself at any price — beyond the region and into Europe," the second insider said.
Iran has already demonstrated its willingness to target locations far from the Middle East.
In February, the US accused Tehran of firing several missiles towards Diego Garcia, a joint US-UK military base in the Indian Ocean, although none reached their target. Turkey also said in March that its Nato air defences intercepted several ballistic missiles launched from Iran.
The UK’s Akrotiri air base in Cyprus was also struck by a drone in March.
Western officials at the time suspected the drone had been launched by Iranian proxy forces rather than directly by Tehran.
The insiders also pointed to an Iranian attack on a US base in Jordan last month that killed three American service members as evidence of Tehran's improving long-range strike capabilities.
“This was also a message to Europe: it can receive missiles, so it should know where it should stand in this war,” one insider said, warning that a major US attack on Iranian infrastructure could push the conflict beyond the region.
However, analysts cautioned that Iran's ability to strike Europe remains limited.
Sidharth Kaushal, a research fellow at the Royal United Services Institute told FT that the threat posed by Iranian missiles to targets in Europe and elsewhere as "real, but limited." Iran could deploy medium-range ballistic missiles against US assets in southern and southeastern Europe, such as its Shahab series, but Kaushal said these would struggle to do damage at longer ranges.
Analysts also said Iran could rely more heavily on regional proxies, including Shia militias in Iraq, Hezbollah in Lebanon and the Houthis in Yemen, rather than relying solely on long-range missile attacks.
