site.btaMedia Review: March 6

MIDDLE EAST CONFLICT

In its main story Capital.bg covers the war in Iran, which is escalating rapidly and spreading across the entire Middle East, and explores the implications for the region, Europe and the global economy.

Iran is a complex, multi-ethnic country with over 90 million people, and there is a real potential for catastrophic disintegration. This is precisely why Iran’s Arab adversaries are cautious about US pressure for regime change, the outlet wrote in the overview. Cornered, Iran did not hold back and attacked countries with which it previously maintained good relations, Oman in particular. It also struck European territory, as a drone hit the runway of the British airbase RAF Akrotiri in Cyprus. In addition to US bases, Iran targeted cities, airports, and energy infrastructure with its missiles. Tehran could go even further, and the previous attacks on energy infrastructure may have been only a warning. The next moves could involve more massive attacks, potentially targeting critical infrastructure. Experts note that an Iranian strike on Arab desalination facilities could have especially severe consequences. Furthermore, the Strait of Hormuz, currently under Iranian fire, is crucial for the region. It exports 20% of the world’s oil and 25% of liquefied gas, and it imports 90% of the food for countries in the region.

 “From here on, two scenarios are emerging for the development of the war in the Middle East. The first is that the US and Israeli operation could be completed within a month, and the second is that it could drag on, which would inevitably lead to ground operations in Iran,” said Assoc. Prof. Iskren Ivanov, a lecturer in international security and conflict management at Sofia University, for Capital.bg.

Which of the two scenarios unfolds depends on whether Iran’s nuclear program is completely eliminated. And this can only be determined if there is a leadership in Tehran willing to negotiate with the US, the expert said.

Whether it wants to or not, Europe is also involved in the conflict. An Iranian strike on Abu Dhabi affected a French naval base. On March 1, after missiles were fired toward Cyprus, likely launched from Lebanon or flying over Israel, British Prime Minister Keir Starmer said that he would allow the US to use British military bases.

For now, European countries will likely limit themselves to defensive actions. Greece and France have already announced that they will send military support to and around the coasts of Cyprus. NATO Secretary-General Mark Rutte firmly stated that the alliance will not participate in the US and Israeli military offensive.

However, if in its rage Iran strikes allied territory with missiles or drones—for example, facilities in Turkiye, Greece, or, Bulgaria—this could trigger the mutual defence clause under Article 5 of the Washington Treaty. The same applies in the event of a major terrorist attack in Europe or the US, similar to the 2001 attacks on the World Trade Center in New York, where Iran’s involvement is undeniably proven.

Iskren Ivanov pointed out that the EU has a direct interest in responding to the tension, since Iran’s ballistic missiles, if it still possesses them, could reach NATO’s eastern flank. Therefore, allies in the Balkans must ensure that the Iranian regime no longer has such capabilities.

“The second danger concerns the hidden cells of terrorist networks in Europe. If Iran still controls them, this clearly represents a threat to European security,” he said.

Europe is particularly vulnerable in terms of energy, after the disruption of Russian gas flows in 2022, the continent now relies significantly more on LNG from the Middle East. The price of natural gas on the Dutch TTF exchange doubled in just two days, reaching EUR 60/MWh, with forecasts predicting a rise to EUR 90, levels unseen since the start of Russia’s war in Ukraine in 2022.

The cause is a major collapse in global supply chains: the blockade of the Strait of Hormuz and the shutdown of the world’s largest terminal, Ras Laffan in Qatar, combined with Iran’s military response, have removed one-fifth of global LNG supplies from the market.

In Bulgaria, the situation has been further complicated by the shutdown of one of the units at the Kozloduy Nuclear Power Plant for maintenance.

ISRAELI AMBASSADOR URGES EUROPE TO ACT TO STOP IRAN

24 quotes Israeli Ambassador Yosi Levi Sfari, as saying in a bTV interview, that Iran is a dangerous country and called on Europe to also act to stop it. "Iran has already attacked 13 countries, including Turkiye, Cyprus, Azerbaijan, and Qatar, in violation of international law,” said the ambassador.

“Whenever we talk about international law, states must follow it. In Israel, we have been doing so for decades. At the same time, Iran declares that it will destroy Israel—whether with nuclear weapons or by using proxies like Hezbollah. We have been attacked many times; we are in a constant state of war,” the diplomat added.

“We did not expect them to attack Azerbaijan or Turkiye. Iran is a dangerous country, and Europe must also get involved to stop them. Imagine that their missiles could carry nuclear weapons, they could reach Europe, even Bulgaria. We do not want such a situation to happen. [...] The information we have is that Iran is trying to develop nuclear weapons, as well as a large number of missiles. In recent weeks they have been trying to place them deep underground, because then we would not be able to reach and destroy them. They already have the capability to block the Strait of Hormuz and thus influence fuel and gas prices. Imagine Iran being able to control fuel prices that could affect the entire world," the diplomat said.

The diplomat said that he has no idea how long the strikes will continue and outlined four objectives: to completely destroy Iran’s ability to develop nuclear weapons; to destroy their capability to produce ballistic missiles; to give the people of Iran the opportunity to take control of their state and end this terrible regime; and to stop Iran from using proxies such as Hezbollah or the Houthis, who abducted Bulgarian sailors.

According to him, any dialogue with the Iranian regime is unsuccessful, because they do not honor their word. Israel’s decision is not to stand by and wait for them to develop capabilities that could destroy the state of Israel.

EX-PRESIDENT RADEV'S NEW PROJECT LEANS TO THE LEFT

Capital.bg writes that the curtain surrounding the political project of ex-president Rumen Radev was slightly lifted with the announcement of its name Progressive Bulgaria. Radev himself will not take on a leadership position in the coalition. The role of co-chairs will be held by two members of his former presidential team - Galab Donev and Dimitar Stoyanov.

However, the questions about the people with whom the former president will challenge those in power, the program of the new formation, and where it will position itself along the political spectrum still remain.

The name of the project is characteristic of center-left formations, which suggests that the former president’s future party will aim at this political segment. To a large extent, this move makes sense, given the expectations that the foundation of the formation will include mostly individuals, and even entire structures, connected to the Bulgarian Socialist Party (BSP).

This political ground, which still has a considerable number of voters, has been largely unoccupied for years after the socialist party vacated it.

Clearly, Radev and his team have chosen to present their political intentions to the public “one spoonful at a time.” From the perspective of sociologists’ forecasts predicting a guaranteed victory in the upcoming parliamentary vote, this approach appears understandable. At the same time, however, this approach also carries certain risks: some of the messages -and especially the people - in his future political project may fail to meet the expectations of part of the voters. Mistakes of this kind are difficult to correct during the course of an election campaign, which will begin in less than two weeks.

CARETAKER CABINET SPEEDS UP PAYMENTS FOR MUNICIPAL PROJECTS

The caretaker government will speed up payments for municipal projects under a government investment program adopted two years ago, reports Sega.bg. Finance Minister Georgi Klisurski said that he will provide weekly updates on the payments made.

He reported that as of February 19, he found approved but unpaid funds under the municipal investment program totaling EUR 192.1 million. Between February 20 and March 2, EUR 68.9 million were already paid. These payments cover completed and reported expenses for 209 projects in 89 municipalities of various sizes across the country. They include advance, interim, and final payments, as well as construction and design supervision, depending on the stage of project implementation.

The large-scale three-year investment program was adopted with the 2024 state budget bill, promising billions of leva that the state would invest in improving municipal infrastructure in small and large settlements nationwide. Subsequently, due to significant budget deficits, the annual funding limits for municipal projects were drastically reduced, against a backdrop of more than 3,000 project submissions totaling nearly BGN 7 billion.

According to the Ministry of Regional Development and Public Works, in 2024 the ministry received and disbursed BGN 500 million to municipalities under this program, and in 2025 BGN 750 million.

Due to the lack of a regular budget for 2026, municipal projects will be implemented through the Bulgarian Development Bank, whose capital the state had previously increased by BGN 4.5 billion, secured from external loans.

“There are serious delays in the payments for these projects, which create difficulties in our payments to the contractor companies,” commented Silvia Georgieva, Executive Director of the National Association of Municipalities, recently in an interview with BNT.

“The funds are disbursed through the Bulgarian Development Bank, but the procedure is three-tiered: the documents are first approved by the Ministry of Regional Development and Public Works, then by the Ministry of Finance, and only then are they sent to the bank for payment. This takes time. In many cases, we face difficulties in paying the contractors, as they have been financing the work on-site for quite a long time - building streets, water supply systems, and other facilities,” Georgieva explained.

WHY CANCER SCREENING IN BULGARIA MAY NEVER TAKE OFF

Bulgaria is a leader in cancer mortality in the EU, and also one of the few countries that does not have a national screening program for detecting signs of oncological diseases at an early stage. However, the first such program- for colorectal cancer and cervical cancer, which is supposed to start this year, already appears doomed to fail, according to an analysis in Capital.bg.

The reasons are rather mundane: the Ministry of Health has ordered extremely expensive tests, there are no machines available to process them, and instead of the state writing the algorithms for conducting the screening and monitoring the process, as it is obliged to do under the national anti-cancer plan, it has delegated this responsibility to the non-governmental sector.

Only one of the organizations, the Bulgarian Medical Association (BMA), which by law is a partner of the state in laying out and implementing healthcare policies, has presented a draft set of algorithms. However, the BMA has in turn hired a private company to write them. The proposed algorithm states that each general practitioner would receive no more than 10 tests, after being trained by that same company—the Center for European Health Policies.

Because of this, the first step of caretaker health minister Michail Okoliyski was to refer the procurement of the tests to the Public Financial Inspection Agency (PFIA). But even if the inspections justify the high price of the tests, the problems, the lack of machines to process the samples and the complicated algorithm, will remain.

In Bulgaria, national-level screening is not carried out, except through preventive check-ups with general practitioners, through health insurers, or through programs run by non-governmental organizations.

With the National Anti-Cancer Plan adopted in 2024, two types of screening for adults were introduced: colorectal cancer screening and cervical cancer screening. However, neither of them has actually started yet. According to the plan, screening for colorectal cancer will be conducted through a fecal occult blood test for patients aged 45 to 74. A total of 160,000 tests are planned - 40,000 per year, which would cover only 1.3% of people in this age group annually. For cervical cancer, the plan includes self-sampling tests for human papillomavirus (HPV) infection among women aged 25 to 65. Here, the total number of tests over four years is 70,000, which would cover only 4.2% of women in this group.

The Ministry of Health says that last year funding was secured and contracts were signed for 51,020 diagnostic kits for testing colorectal cancer and 22,068 kits for cervical cancer. So far, however, they have not been delivered. The company has offered nine machines free of charge for analyzing colorectal cancer samples, but the operational organization for actually carrying out the screening—including logistics, the laboratory network, and the information campaign—has not yet been completed and work on it is still ongoing.

PROSECUTION OPENS PROBE INTO POSSIBLE MISUSE OF PATIENTS’ PERSONAL DATA

TrudNews.bg writes that the National Health Insurance Fund (NHIF) has referred cases of hospital admissions to the prosecutor’s office to determine whether there has been any misuse of patients’ personal data.

According to NHIF chief Petko Stefanovski, the regional health insurance funds have checked 258 hospitals, where there was information that 4,155 patients, recorded as admitted for treatment, were actually in gaming halls.

Of these patients, the regional health insurance funds were unable to contact 1,659, while 234 patients refused to cooperate. The remaining patients confirmed that they had been in the hospital during the period in question. Among the patients contacted by the regional funds, 10% reported playing online gambling games while hospitalized, but the National Revenue Agency clarified that there were no online bets—the patients had been physically present in the gaming halls. Nearly 8% of the patients admitted to leaving the hospital during their hospitalization.

According to Stefanovski, 85 patients said that their personal ID data had been used by other people, and 11 patients said they were in the hospital but did not stay overnight, for which the hospitals were fined nearly EUR 60,000.

For the period January–December 2025, a total of 2,317,179 hospitalizations under clinical pathways were recorded, representing a 2.61% increase compared to the same period in 2024, according to an NHIF analysis published on the institution’s website. The largest number of clinical pathways was reported mainly in the major regional cities in Bulgaria, which also have the highest concentration of healthcare facilities - Sofia City, Plovdiv, Burgas, Pleven, and Varna.