On September 12, 2020, at the tail end of the last Trump administration, the United States and Cyprus agreed to establish the Cyprus Center for Land, Open-seas, and Port Security (CYCLOPS). Just over 18 months later, the facility opened for business.
Perched on a hill above Larnaca, the small facility looks unassuming; most visitors to the beachfront, shops, and restaurants below likely do not know that it exists. It is security with a Cypriot face: unassuming yet crucial; hidden yet on the front line of U.S. and European security.
The concept of CYCLOPS is simple: It is a training center for Middle Eastern and other partners to learn to detect and blunt the threats posed by smugglers seeking to sneak weaponry, biological weapons, or chemical agents, and even radioactive material through seaports or airports.
CYCLOPS staff can configure containers to allow customs and counter-terror operatives to detect terrorists hiding in the ship’s hold.
The facility contains mock-ups of passport controls, the interior of ships, and laboratories. Lebanese, Iraqis, Yemenis, Egyptians, and others come through and drill to learn detection, laboratory etiquette to avoid contamination should they intercept biological or radiological agents. They drill to identify the latest smuggling techniques. CYCLOPS staff can configure containers to allow customs and counter-terror operatives to detect terrorists hiding in the ship’s hold and test whether inspectors and agents can operate in pitch black, or how fast they can find a mock-up of a ticking bomb.
What makes the CYCLOPS facility more invaluable is its location in Cyprus. The nature of the partnerships CYCLOPS advances means that those countries most in need of training are those that face the greatest challenges and have the least capacity. It can be difficult to bring Yemenis, Iraqis, or Lebanese to the United States for fear that those receiving visas for training could abscond or make false asylum claims.
Here, Cyprus provides an advantage: A small island nation, it is difficult for visa violators to hide. Nor is it attractive for a Yemeni to be stuck for years, if not decades, on the island. What the mainstream media often forget when covering refugee flows in Europe is that, Schengen zone or not, asylum seekers and refugees must stake in the country where they first arrive and make their claim. To land on the beach in Greece or Italy does not mean a right to travel to Germany or France, though some try due to open borders. Because it is an island, Cyprus means they have little ability to move onward. This likely will remain true even if Cyprus joins Schengen this year.
CYCLOPS kicked into gear to oversee the security scanning to enable tons of goods to enter Gaza round-the-clock.
The U.S. trust in Cyprus spans across administrations. So, too, does Israel’s trust. While President Joe Biden’s floating pier scheme was naïve, expensive, and counterproductive, the only country that had the trust of Israel to do the security to be transported from the pier was Cyprus. CYCLOPS kicked into gear to oversee the security scanning to enable tons of goods to enter Gaza round-the-clock. Whereas Israeli security officers repeatedly have found weaponry and explosive precursors in Gaza-destined goods arriving at Israeli ports from Turkey, Israeli security checks found everything cleared through CYCLOPS to be transparent.
Central to President Donald Trump’s philosophy is that U.S. partners must pull their own weight and contribute as much to regional security as they receive. Few countries do; many European diplomats seek to use clever accounting to inflate their NATO contributions or simply fall short and hope that Washington will neither notice nor take action.
Although not in NATO, Cyprus pulls its own weight. Like a true investment, it requires some money down to provide far more in return. While the United States provided the seed money for CYCLOPS, and the European Union is helping this year to fund its expansion, a more predictable budget would allow better planning and broaden the capacity of U.S. partners in the Middle East and Europe to prevent the smuggling of explosives and detection of unconventional agents or radioactive cargo. An annual subsidy of $2 million to fund programs—easily reallocated from existing State Department or Defense Department budgets—could help the United States prevent billions of dollars of damage wrought by a terrorist incident in one of its own ports by allowing its countries to intercept smugglers and terrorists while they are still several thousand miles away.
The United States is at its strongest when it is proactive. Cyprus enables it to do so. Secretary of State Marco Rubio should pick up the mantle that Mike Pompeo set, and Antony Blinken continued. CYCLOPS is the marquee partnership to make America safe and great again.
