Cyprus suffers from its proximity to the Middle East powder keg

The mild Mediterranean air cradles the goldfinches that flutter around the veranda of the Oasis restaurant, occasionally landing on its empty tables. From its windows, one can see the bay of Limassol in Cyprus: a couple of daring Russians are swimming in the still-chilly waters, while the Greek Navy frigates sent to defend the island take up positions on the horizon. “It’s been several days since almost anyone has come,” laments Andriana, the owner, where only a couple of British retirees are having an early lunch and an elderly Greek woman is writing in her diary.

Ever since an Iranian-made drone crashed into the British airbase at Akrotiri on Sunday night last week, air raid sirens have sounded almost daily, warning of suspicious objects heading towards Cyprus. British and Greek fighter jets have scrambled on several occasions to intercept them, although the Cypriot government maintains that most of these incidents have been “false alarms.”

Although the Royal Air Force (RAF) military installations are about six kilometers away (3.7 miles), the territory under British sovereignty begins right where the Oasis restaurant is located and extends over 123 square kilometers (47 square miles). When London granted independence to its former colony in 1960, it reserved this territory and Dhekelia, in the east of the island, to maintain a foothold in the Middle East. In fact, both bases have been used in the invasion of Iraq, the war in Afghanistan, the operation against Gaddafi in Libya, and the protection of Israel during the 2024 Iranian attack. And the immense radar system installed in Dhekelia, which can detect signals as far away as Afghanistan or Russia, shares information with the United States.

“For years, Cyprus was immune to the conflicts in the Middle East, and everyone assumed that British bases would defend us,” explains Fiona Mullen, an analyst and director at the Nicosia-based consultancy Sapienta. Now, however, it seems to be waking up to the reality of geography: the EU’s easternmost state is just 200 km (124 miles) from Lebanon and 260 (161) from Israel. “Of course, the situation isn’t as dangerous as in Dubai or Qatar, but the fact that a drone was able to evade British defenses has increased uncertainty,” she adds.

At first glance, life seems to go on as usual in the city of Limassol, near Akrotiri. “Size matters,” emphasizes a sign in English on the avenue leading to the marina. It’s an advertisement for a real estate agency offering “the largest apartments in downtown Limassol.” Numerous ads in English or Russian throughout the city and along the island’s roads entice people to invest in property. In the last 20 years, the face of Cyprus’ second-largest city has completely changed: its population has doubled to 200,000, and skyscrapers in the style of the Gulf countries have risen above its traditional low-rise houses. The marina is now filled with luxury villas, some boasting an Aston Martin, Porsche or Ferrari parked out front, and a yacht or sailboat moored in the canal bordering the garden. “First, many Russians arrived, then Israelis, and now more are coming from northern and central Europe,” explains a saleswoman at a real estate agency in the port.

Perhaps due to their experience of being invaded throughout history, from the Greco-Persian Wars up until the 20th century, not forgetting the Crusades, Cypriots have developed a particular instinct for reinventing themselves after each blow. After the 1974 war, which left the island divided between a Turkish Cypriot north and a Greek Cypriot south deprived of the best arable land, the island became the Middle East’s bank for those fleeing conflict. Later, it became a haven for Russian oligarchs uncertain about their country’s situation. And after the 2013 banking crisis, the government at the time pulled a controversial program out of thin air, granting citizenship in exchange for the purchase of real estate (a program they later had to reverse).

The cranes are still working because there’s demand. In the imposing Trilogy towers, only a few apartments remain available, priced at over €5 million ($5.8 million), and the few remaining apartments and villas in the marina start at €3.9 million ($4.5 million). “But for €550,000 ($635,000), we can offer you a detached house in this development with a golf course on the outskirts of Limassol, with the assurance that, when its development is completed in three or four years, it will be worth double,” assures the real estate agent. That is, unless everything falls apart: the development in question is located just over five kilometers (three miles) as the crow flies from the RAF facilities hit by the Iranian drone.

“The attack is changing the perception of Cyprus as a safe haven for doing business. The island thought that the only problems could come from Turkey,” says Mullen. The Cypriot economy depends on tourism (with 4.5 million visitors in 2025), services related to the financial and technology sectors, and construction — all sectors highly susceptible to instability. Hüseyin, a Turkish Cypriot taxi driver, explains that even in the north, travel cancellations have already been felt, and he longs for the crisis to end soon: “Our elders lived through the [1974] war and know how terrible it is.”

“Nobody knows what’s going to happen,” says Hula, in a run-down café in Asómatos, one of the villages near the British base. “Will a bomb fall, or not? Who knows?” Then he turns back to tending to the pot from which an aroma of beans wafts. In the neighboring village of Trachoni, young Kostas and Elisavet have grown up seeing British soldiers come to shop or eat in their taverns. It’s always been this way, and they’ve never questioned the UK’s right to use the bases—a murmur that has resurfaced after the Iranian attack, with the Cypriot government calling for a review of the treaty. But they acknowledge that people “have started to get scared,” seeing themselves as potential targets for Iranian drones or missiles.

Most of the residents of these two villages have not left their homes, unlike what happened on Monday in Akrotiri, which is adjacent to the military base of the same name and which the Nicosia government ordered to be evacuated. Nevertheless, many of the village’s businesses reopened last Wednesday. “I think the danger has been exaggerated. It’s not that bad,” says George, owner of a fish and chip shop who relies on the base’s personnel. Young people from the village and British soldiers began frequenting the cafes on Wednesday, although a certain tension was palpable among the military personnel. The following day, this journalist received a call from the local police station asking what he was doing loitering in the area.

Criticism of London

On Thursday, in an interview with the Greek television channel Skai, Cypriot President Nikos Christodoulides again criticized the U.K. for its handling of the crisis and accused it of targeting Cyprus. Keir Starmer’s statements have certainly been somewhat ambiguous: first offering the U.K.’s bases to the U.S., then denying that Cypriot bases would be used, and later acknowledging that fighter jets from Akrotiri had participated in shooting down an Iranian drone over Jordanian airspace (which could have been targeting Israel). London has also updated its travel advisories for its citizens on the island, warning of potential “terrorist attacks,” and the U.S. — whose staff were temporarily evacuated from the embassy during Wednesday’s alert — has also advised against travel to the island.

The Cypriot government believes the situation is being exaggerated and is trying to maintain a balance between allaying fears and taking safety measures, such as asking the population to prepare backpacks that they can take to a shelter in case of emergency (although those who have checked the shelters marked on a government mobile application complain that some do not exist and others are private garages) and creating a telephone alert system, the first test of which did not work entirely well.

An editorial in this week’s Cyprus Mail criticized the Cypriot government for pointing to the U.K. as the source of its problems, when it is the Cypriot government that, in recent years, has strengthened its own relations with Israel and the U.S., offering them the use of its own bases. “I think this strengthens Cyprus’ defenses, but at the same time it creates insecurity at a time when it is not clear that the U.S. or Israel can be trusted,” argues Mullen.

Cyprus is a member of the European Union, but not of NATO (in fact, until 2004 it was a member of the Non-Aligned Movement, which includes Iran). However, the northern third of the island is controlled by Turkey, a NATO member but not an EU member; and another 3% of the island is part of the U.K., which is a NATO member but no longer an EU member, complicating the island’s defense: Turkey vetoes any possibility of Cyprus joining NATO; Cyprus and its ally Greece oppose any EU defense rapprochement with Turkey.

Although Nicosia has deployed an anti-aircraft system purchased from Israel in recent months, its forces are insufficient for self-defense. Cyprus’s air force (3 aircraft, 4 drones, and 15 helicopters) is among the smallest in the world, and its navy — composed mostly of patrol boats — is the weakest in the region. Hence the importance the Cypriots attach to the naval and air assistance pledged by countries such as Greece, France, Italy, the Netherlands, and Spain, which has sent the frigate Cristóbal Colón, at this time of uncertainty.

Almost adjacent to the RAF base is a Greek Orthodox monastery: St. Nicholas of the Cats. Surrounded by marshland and silence, except when fighter jets roar overhead, startling the birds from the reedbeds. The felines — supposedly descendants of those that, according to legend, Helena brought from Constantinople in the 4th century to combat a plague of snakes — populate the parking lot, the gardens, the table selling cards with pictures of saints, their gaze indifferent, unfazed by the arrival of a vehicle. In the monastery kitchen there are three elderly nuns, rigorously covered in black from head to toe, chatting and oblivious to the affairs of this world. No one has come to evacuate them, but they are not afraid. When asked, one shrugs and replies, “God’s will be done.”

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