The Bombers Have Gone Home
Twelve American Bomers left Gloucestershire this weekend. Britain carried the risk, Washington took the decision, and nobody has told the public what actually happened at Whelford.
The clearest statement anyone has made about the RAF Fairford affair was not made in words. It was made by a dozen B-1B Lancers climbing out of Gloucestershire on Sunday and pointing west.
The Pentagon confirmed it afterwards: “While operational security precluded us from confirming the movement of our assets and forces in real-time, we can acknowledge now that all US bombers that were deployed to RAF Fairford have redeployed to their home stations in the United States.” The move came roughly a week after the arrests near the base, and was first reported by the Wall Street Journal, which also reported that American intelligence officials had held information about an Iran-linked plot to target bombers and personnel at Fairford. That second claim remains an intelligence report attributed to unnamed officials. It is not an established fact, and it has not been tested in any court.
Here is what is established. In the early hours of 27 September, Gloucestershire Constabulary arrested five men at Whelford, a village beside the base, under the Explosives Act 1875 and the Terrorism Act 2006. They were aged between 23 and 25, all British, all from London. Counter Terrorism Policing took over the investigation and further arrested them on suspicion of preparing a terrorist act. The next day, Assistant Commissioner Laurence Taylor announced that all five had been bailed. A cordon of 400 metres had gone up and around 85 households had been evacuated.
Then the story began to come apart. Taylor later confirmed that no improvised explosive devices were found in the three vans, though a quantity of petrol was recovered. The vehicles carried the livery of a legitimate fuel transit company, which denied owning them. The Times reported that one of the five had himself telephoned 999 about an hour before a local farmer raised the alarm. Two military sources told the local outlet Wiltshire 999s that the men were thieves siphoning fuel, with barrels and equipment found in the vans near a diesel supply. That account has never been confirmed by police, and other sources have dismissed it.
A sixth man, a 25-year-old dual UK-Iranian national, was arrested in Westminster on Thursday and released on bail on Saturday. Vicki Evans, the senior national co-ordinator for Counter Terrorism Policing, called the investigation hugely complex and said her teams were looking at all possible angles, including possible foreign state involvement. Six arrests. Six releases. No charges.
The RAF Fairford Plot Claims Ran Ahead of the Evidence
Into that vacuum walked the people with something to gain. Prime Minister Andy Burnham said there were strong indications that Iran played a part. The Iranian embassy in London rejected what it called unfounded and malicious speculation, and Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi accused Burnham of blaming Tehran without cause. Donald Trump went further and faster. “We know everything about them,” the president said of men who have not been charged with anything. “We would not have released them.” He told reporters the suspects had been under view for a long time and were looking to do big damage. Secretary of State Marco Rubio called it the work of a foreign actor and said a great many people were disturbed by the bail decision.
On Thursday, Benjamin Netanyahu claimed Israel had passed Britain intelligence about an Iranian-sponsored attack. He made that claim public shortly before Britain announced a ban on trade with illegal Israeli settlements in the West Bank. Readers can draw their own conclusions about the timing. We offer it as a fact about when a claim was made, not as evidence of what it contained.
So there are three stories on the table, and every one of them suits somebody. A foiled Iranian operation vindicates the war party in Washington. A fuel theft that triggered a national security panic humiliates the men who shouted first and checked afterwards. A third possibility, popular online, of an operation that did not go as designed, remains speculation without evidence and should be treated as such until that changes.
Washington’s reaction is identical under all three versions. The bombers left either way.
The Terms of the Bargain
RAF Fairford became a forward operating base for American strikes because the previous prime minister, Sir Keir Starmer, granted the United States permission to use British bases for what were described as defensive operations against Tehran. In July, the Iranian Revolutionary Guards warned that any base used to launch attacks on their country would be a legitimate target. That was the bargain, stated in the open: Britain would supply the runway and inherit the enemies that came with it. The village of Whelford was not asked. Nor, when the decision to leave was taken, was Britain. The BBC has been told the withdrawal was a military rather than a political decision, settled at operational level in Washington and then communicated to its British counterparts. The Ministry of Defence has said nothing at all.
Defence Secretary Wes Streeting justified the silence by arguing that the more is said about the case, the more insight is handed to those who would do us harm. There is a real principle buried in that, and contempt of court rules genuinely do constrain what can be published about a live investigation. But the principle has been applied with remarkable selectivity. It did not stop the Prime Minister naming a foreign state. It did not stop an American president announcing that he knew everything about six men who have been charged with nothing. The gag operates on the public, and on nobody else.
This is what a client relationship looks like once the paint comes off. We accepted the target. We accepted the threat that came with it. We were not trusted with the reason it was withdrawn, and we are still not trusted with the truth about what happened in a Gloucestershire lane at a quarter to one in the morning.
Five men in three white vans, not one of them charged with anything, achieved what forty years of protest outside the wire never managed. The bombers went home.
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