The Cypriot village of Akrotiri was evacuated due to British base operations, forcing residents to leave their homes and find refuge elsewhere.[1]
A 2026 drone strike on the base
John Kiriakou says a drone that hit the UK’s Akrotiri base in Cyprus was likely an Israeli operation, staged to increase American, British, Cypriot, and Greek interest in the region, and initially — falsely — blamed on Iran: “I make that the Israelis decided we need to get the Americans, the British, the Cypriots, the Greeks more interested. We’re going to send a drone… and then we’re going to blame it on the Iranians.”[2]
The day before the war
Akrotiri appears once more in Kiriakou’s account, as an indicator rather than a place. On the first morning of the 2026 Iran war he described a conversation from the previous day with a friend in Cyprus, who told him that something was going on at the British air base there.
He noted the secrecy of the arrangement — the British “don’t release any information, of course,” and in a hundred years “have never ceded any control to the to the Cypriots” — but the friend was certain something had changed.[3][4]
His answer, by his own account, needed no analysis: “I said, ‘Oh, I can tell you what’s going on. We’re getting ready to bomb Iran.’ And there it is.”[4]