Iran Puts US Bases in Europe in Its Sights: "A New War Won't Stay in the Middle East"

Former Iranian foreign minister and current MP Manouchehr Mottaki has warned that a new war against Iran "will no longer be regional" and will spread beyond the Middle East. Iran's Revolutionary Guard went a step further: if the US launches new strikes, Iran will attack American military bases in Europe.

The Guard claims that Britain, Italy, Portugal, Germany and several other European countries made their bases available to the American aircraft that prepared and carried out the strikes on Iran. That's their claim, with no independent confirmation. But the list was spoken out loud, and in Tehran lists like that are rarely read out for entertainment.

Mottaki also talked about missiles. According to him, Iran can increase their range from 300 to 2,000 kilometres and can act pre-emptively - if it judges where a threat is coming from, it won't wait for it to materialise. Iran's military doctrine, he said, is not purely defensive.

The nuclear treaty on the table

The heaviest part of the statement is something else. Iran has been a member of the Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons for more than half a century, and Mottaki says it's time to seriously consider leaving. MPs, he claims, are getting around 200 messages a day demanding that Iran quit the treaty. The final decision rests with the supreme commander. His "compromise": Iran leaves the treaty but keeps honouring its non-proliferation obligations and doesn't develop nuclear weapons.

Diplomacy, on paper at least, is still breathing. Mottaki claims that in the Islamabad talks the American 15-point proposal was 60-70 percent in Washington's favour, and Iran's 14-point one equally in Tehran's favour. Now Iran has set seven new conditions and a one-week deadline, although Mottaki himself doesn't expect the Americans to accept them within 48 hours. Iranian officials have also mentioned cutting the deadline to two days.

Mottaki warned that using nuclear weapons against Iran could lead to World War Three. Citing Putin, he added that Moscow wants to keep, and increase, the number of its experts at the Bushehr nuclear power plant. The message to Europe between the lines: your airfields are part of this war, like it or not.

The Balkans know American bases up close, and Italy is just across the sea. Did the European governments that opened their runways count on a response like this - or will they, as usual, only do the risk maths once the threat becomes reality?