‘Terrorist plot’ against RAF base: British-Iranian man arrested

The suspicion that there is a link to Tehran behind the alleged sabotage plot foiled on Sunday against the British RAF airbase at Fairford – used by US bombers in the war against the Islamic Republic – has materialised with the arrest of a man of Iranian origin. After days of secrecy, speculation and contradictory accounts – not without grey areas that have yet to be clarified – the counter-terrorism unit has just announced the arrest of a 27-year-old man holding dual British and Iranian nationality.

The man, who was arrested in the heart of London, in Westminster, is suspected of having helped to “prepare a terrorist attack” under section 5 of the Terrorism Act 2006. At the same time, a 26-year-old man, a British national, was questioned. Meanwhile, the other five British nationals, aged between 23 and 25, who were arrested immediately after the incident alongside the three white vans spotted on Sunday night not far from the perimeter fencing of the Fairford military base in Gloucestershire (southern England). They were then all unexpectedly released on bail within just 24 hours or thereabouts.

Investigators have not provided any details regarding the arrest of the British-Iranian man, other than to state that they had also searched his home and a second address in London earlier that day. This caution comes in the wake of questions raised by a whole series of apparent inconsistencies surrounding the case and the accounts that initially circulated; all the more so after no trace of explosives was found in the three vans stopped a few kilometres from the base and inspected for a day and a half by military bomb disposal teams, whilst an entire village was evacuated. But these statements are compounded by the more explicit reference to the suspicion of an Iranian link, which was also reiterated on Wednesday by the British Prime Minister, Andy Burnham.

In the last few hours, Israel’s Prime Minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, has weighed in on the matter, claiming that his country’s intelligence services had warned the British several weeks ago of the risk of a hostile action backed by Iran: “The day before,” he added pointedly on Fox News, referring to the Burnham government’s formalisation of unprecedented sanctions against trade with all Israeli settlements in the occupied Palestinian territories.

Allegations which, moreover, Tehran “categorically” denies as manipulative, conspiratorial and entirely “baseless”. This was accompanied by the summoning today of the British ambassador, Hugo Shorter, to whom the Deputy Foreign Minister, Majid Takht-Ravanchi, took issue with the UK’s “destructive approach” towards his country. He also denounced London’s logistical “complicity” with US and Israeli military actions against Iran.