5429 | 6 March 2026 | 13:26

аSuch decisions can be made by the Council of Ministers or by the Minister of Defense, but with the requirement to immediately inform the National Assembly and the President. However, this has not happened in the current situation, emphasized Tagareva.

 The American planes, which are in Bulgaria, are tankers that refuel other planes in the air, which fly from the USA or the UK towards Iran or back.

 This was stated by former Defense Minister Todor Tagarev in an interview for the Bulgarian National Radio.

 Ukraine is currently taking a backseat, as all the media attention and attention of the people is focused on the war in the Middle East, strikes against Iran and retaliatory strikes against countries from the Gulf and Israel, Tagarev pointed out.

 "In this situation, Ukraine is doing quite well. And it can really help with its know-how - not only with the anti-drone systems themselves, but generally with the tactics of detection, utilization, management, and coordination with other air defense and missile defense systems." This is a unique experience that only Ukraine possesses among these countries, to which we could turn," he expressed his opinion.

 The military expert also highlighted the issue of the quantities of resources for attack and defense.

 "Ukraine understood long ago that it needs to develop inexpensive systems for anti-aircraft, anti-drone defense, specifically to not deplete its capacity and to face more serious threats, such as winged, particularly ballistic missiles and the newer ones like Kinzhal-type, which are quite difficult to shoot down and require the use of missiles like "Patriot", the modern models of which cost around 4 million. "Dollar and More," he explained in an interview for the show "Before All."

 "I don't see any logic in Iran firing a missile against Turkey," emphasized Todor Tagarev and explained,

 "Turkey is a neighboring country of Iran. There is a large population in Iran of Azerbaijan origin. In Iran, there are at least 8-10 million Azerbaijanis, according to some data - 25-30 million. The last thing Iran needs is to alienate this community and turn Turkey against itself. I don't see any logic in that. I give priority to the idea that there was a technical malfunction or the rocket was not well-prepared for flight, instead of Iran intentionally seeking confrontation with Turkey - I don't see any logic in that." It is even harder for Azerbaijan to say - there, I would even allow discussion of some conspiracy theories, that this may be an attempt to set this specific community - Azerbaijanis, against the central government of Iran.

 According to him, the reason for the attack on Iran is the country's aggressive role in the region and especially the threat to create nuclear weapons:

 "If it acquires nuclear weapons, it would be a huge problem not only for Israel, but for the entire region and for global politics in general, for the state of peace and war in the world."

 To resolve the issue, it must be categorically clear and based on direct observations and evidence that Iran is not continuing to develop nuclear weapons, Tagarev stated emphatically. However according to him, there is no such mechanism in the past months:

 "Iran has not accepted to have an international mission to inspect all these underground factories, centrifuges that enrich uranium, everything is buried in tunnels, in mountains, which produce the respective potential carriers of nuclear weapons."

 He admits that there has been information in the past months that Iran has resumed its nuclear program and has started working again to create nuclear weapons.

 As another problem, the former defense minister pointed out Iran's proxies. According to him, however, this problem can be solved with other means. According to him, the capacity of Iran to support them has sharply decreased.

 Todor Tagarev believes that it will be very difficult for a ground operation to be carried out in Iran, but efforts are being made for one.

 "This is a very difficult situation for Iran and it is only a matter of how well they have hidden their offensive weapons and how much of them will survive and be able to be used, but this potential will be systematically destroyed at a very high pace. And I personally expect these possibilities of Iran to launch attacks, especially in a concentrated manner as it happened last night against Israel, to sharply decrease. Then the question is whether the people will rise again, whether they will come out to protest, whether some parts of the regime's security structures will side with the people against the regime."

 According to the former minister, in this situation the Bulgarian government is doing what is possible. He is categorical that the American planes, which are in Bulgaria, are tankers that refuel other planes in the air flying from the USA or UK in the direction of Iran or back.

 According to him, such decisions can be made by the Council of Ministers or the Minister of Defense, but with the requirement to immediately inform the National Assembly and the President. However, this has not happened in the current situation, emphasized Targarev.

 Source: BNR.