Europe braces as Iran threatens to attack
As authorities tighten security, this is where Europe is most at risk from Iranian drones, missiles, cyberattacks and assassinations.
A UK Ministry of Defence handout of an RAF F-35B Typhoon preparing for operations from Akrotiri, Cyprus. Tehran has threatened its retaliation for action in the Middle East could be attacks on European soil. | Sgt Lee Goddard/MoD Crown Copyright via Getty Images
LONDON — The Iranian regime is warning it will attack European cities in any country that joins Donald Trump’s military operation and governments across the region are stepping up security in response.
So far, Iranian drones have already targeted Cyprus, with one striking a British Royal Air Force base on the island, and others shot down before they could hit. That prompted the U.K., France and Greece to send jets, warships and helicopters to Cyprus to protect the country from further drone attacks.
But with the British, French and German leaders saying they are ready to launch defensive military action in the Middle East, Tehran threatened to retaliate against these countries with attacks on European soil.
“It would be an act of war. Any such act against Iran would be regarded as complicity with the aggressors. It would be regarded as an act of war against Iran,” Esmail Baghaei, Iran’s foreign ministry spokesperson, told Iranian state media.
Mark Rutte, the former Dutch Prime Minister who now leads NATO, warned on Tuesday that Tehran posed a threat that reached deep into Europe.
“Let’s be absolutely clear-eyed to what’s happening here,” Rutte said. “Iran is close to getting its hands on a nuclear capability and on a ballistic missile capability, which is posing a threat not only to the region — the Middle East, including posing an existential threat to Israel — it is also posing a huge threat to us here in Europe.” Iran is “an exporter of chaos” responsible over decades for terrorist plots and assassination attempts, including against people living on European soil, he said.
Here, POLITICO sets out what Iran is capable of, and where European countries may be at greatest risk.
Missiles aimed at Athens and even Berlin
According to reports, Iran has been developing an intercontinental ballistic missile with a range of 10,000 kilometers, which would put European and even American territory potentially within range, said Antonio Giustozzi from the Royal United Services Institute think tank in London. It is not clear whether, under constant attack, Tehran would be able to manufacture and deploy an experimental missile like this, he said.
“Realistically, the further away you fire them, the less precise they will be,” Giustozzi told POLITICO. “Let’s say they had four or five long-range missiles. There may be some value to target something in Europe just to create some excitement and scare public opinion from intervening.”
Iran’s ballistic missile arsenal is known to include several medium-range systems that stretch to roughly 2,000 kilometers, according to the Center for Strategic and International Studies’ Missile Threat database.
The solid-fueled Sejjil and Khorramshahr missiles are both assessed to have about that range, which would extend to parts of southeastern Europe from Iranian territory, including areas of Greece, Bulgaria and Romania, depending on the launch location.
Romania has a U.S. missile shield site at Deveselu in the southern part of the country which was built to intercept potential missile attacks from Iran. This week, military security was stepped up at the site, according to Romania’s defense minister.
Tehran has long described 2,000 kilometers as a self-imposed ceiling for its ballistic missile program — a limit that keeps most of Europe outside of the envelope while preserving regional reach.
Defence Express, a Kyiv-based defense consultancy group, said the Khorramshahr missile may be capable of hitting targets 3,000 kilometers away if it was fitted with a lighter warhead, potentially bringing Berlin and Rome within range. However, the number of such long-range missiles in Iran’s arsenal is unlikely to be large.
‘Shahed’ drones and toys packed with explosives
Iran has invested heavily in drone development and production, and these uncrewed projectiles may be its best flexible weapon. Iran’s “Shahed” drones have been deployed by Russian forces since the early days of the full-scale invasion of Ukraine. These one-way attack drones have a range claimed to be as much as 2,500 kilometers.
To reach targets inside European territory they would need to fly at low altitude across countries such as Turkey and Jordan, though Cyprus has already found out it is within range. Analysts believe the drone that hit U.K.’s RAF Akrotiri air base in Cyprus was likely a shahed-type, and may have been fired from Lebanon by Hezbollah, Iran’s proxy.
But Giustozzi said commercially available drones — even toys — could be used to cause havoc inside Europe. Iran is known to have a network of sleeper agents operating across many countries in Europe, he said, who use criminal groups to carry out attacks.
They could be tasked with a coordinated effort to fly drones over civilian airports, forcing flights to be halted and causing chaos to air traffic across Europe, he said. This would be cheap and easy to do. More ambitious attacks could include striking military targets with drones loaded with explosives.
But such risk may be low, Giustozzi said, as Iran may not have been able to smuggle bomb making components into European countries as this has not been its primary mode of operation in the region in recent years.
Hit squads and terrorists
Tehran’s recent focus has been on intimidating and targeting people and groups who are critical of the regime, particularly among the large Iranian diaspora dispersed widely across European countries, according to analysts.
According to an intelligence summary from one Western government, Iran has a long record of plots to assassinate and attack targets inside Europe. Its state-sponsored terrorism involves a mix of direct operations by Iranian forces and, according to the intelligence summary, a growing reliance on organized criminal gangs to maintain “plausible deniability.”
In the past decade, incidents have included the arrest of Iranian diplomat Assadollah Assadi for providing explosives to a couple tasked with bombing a large rally of the National Council of Resistance of Iran (NCRI). Assadi was sentenced to 20 years in prison.
After massive cyberattacks against state infrastructure, the Albanian government formally severed all ties with Iran in 2022. Four years earlier, Albania expelled the Iranian ambassador and several diplomats for plotting a truck bomb attack against an Iranian dissident camp. The Dutch government accused Iran of involvement in the targeted killing of two dissidents, in 2015 and 2017.
Suspected Iranian-backed assassination plots and other attacks have also been reported in Belgium, Cyprus, France, Germany, Sweden, and the U.K., among other countries in Europe.
Cyber attacks
The threat to Europeans from Iran is not just physical, with the regime long being regarded as a capable actor in cyber warfare.
Experts and officials warned Iran could launch fresh cyber operations against Europe in the wake of the war started by the U.S. and Israel, either by targeting governments directly or by hitting critical infrastructure operators.
“We have to monitor now the situation very carefully when it comes to our cyber security and especially our critical infrastructure,” European Commission Executive Vice President Henna Virkkunen told POLITICO. “We know that the online dimension is also very important, the recruiting channel and especially the propaganda is also spread very much online.”
Iran is typically seen as one of the big four cyber adversaries to the West — alongside Russia, China and North Korea. So far, however, there is little evidence to suggest it’s actively targeting Europe.
In fact, Iran’s cyber activity has largely stopped since the U.S. bombing began, according to one senior European cybersecurity official, granted anonymity to discuss ongoing assessments.
If and when European countries make their support for U.S. and Israeli activities more explicit, that will likely draw them into the firing line, cyber industry officials said. “Europe should definitely expect that exactly what happened in the Gulf could happen and should happen in Europe,” said Gil Messing, chief of staff at Israeli cyber firm Check Point.
Messing said his firm is already seeing evidence of cyberattacks in Cyprus, the only EU country that Iran has targeted with physical attacks so far. There’s no evidence of attacks in other European countries but it’s likely coming down the tracks, he said.
And if attacks do take place, Iran’s capabilities, though lessened in recent years, remain significant, experts said. Iran’s security and intelligence services have cyber units comprising hundreds of people, with tens of millions of dollars of funding, Messing said.
“If the regime lasts,” the senior official quoted above said, “they will be back.”
Victor Goury-Laffont, Laura Kayali, Antoaneta Roussi, Joshua Berlinger and Sebastian Starcevic contributed reporting.
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