The government of Cyprus has begun the process of acquiring several batteries of the "Iron Dome" anti-missile defense complex from Israel. Cyprus and Israel have already signed all the necessary documents for the implementation of this agreement, but the details, such as the delivery date and the quantity of air defense systems provided, are not disclosed, according to the Israeli media The Jerusalem Post.
The authors of the article highlighted two details. The first one is that Cyprus decided to acquire the "Iron Dome" precisely for protecting itself from drones and other small-sized aircraft that could be used by the pro-Turkish formations of Northern Cyprus, or by Turkiye itself. Secondly, this procurement became possible after the formal agreement of the United States, as one of the developers of this complex.
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From the Defense Express perspective, we’d like to add that Israel has its own motive for selling the "Iron Dome" to Cyprus as an enemy of Turkey. At least for the reason that Israel and Turkey are also opponents: Ankara believes that Turkiye is the only one to have hegemony in the Eastern Mediterranean, whereas Tel Aviv categorically disagrees with such an order of things.
At the moment, the National Guard (the armed forces) of Cyprus have at their disposal a rather modest arsenal of air defense equipment: six 9K331 "Tor-M1" air defense systems and four 9K37M1 "Buk-M1" air defense systems, which the Cypriots purchased from the Russian Federation in the 1990s-2000s . In April 2022, the media reported that the United States was negotiating with Cyprus about the transfer of russian-made equipment for Ukraine.
And here, reasonably, an assumption follows that the supply of "Iron Dome" to Cyprus is part of a prolonged story about the transfer of "Cypriot" air defense systems to Ukraine.
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