Farmer's midnight call leads to five arrests near RAF Fairford

Security officials suspect U.S. B-1 bombers at Fairford were likely target

British investigators are probing whether Iran or an Islamist group directed a foiled attack on RAF Fairford, a U.S.-hosted air base in western England, the Wall Street Journal reported Monday. Police arrested five men on suspicion of preparing a terrorist act a few hundred yards from the base in the early hours of Sunday after a farmer reported three white vans blocking a nearby road.

Iran had warned the UK earlier this year that it would face consequences for allowing the U.S. to use its bases to attack the country, the Journal reported. Fairford is one of the few military air bases in Europe with a runway long enough to launch heavy bombers, and security at the installation had been ramped up in recent days.

Security officials said Monday that it was still too early to determine whether the men were directed by Tehran. Police have yet to formally identify the five suspects or identify a motive, according to officials familiar with the matter. American and British security officials were aware of a growing threat to the base in recent weeks, the Journal reported, and President Trump said the U.S. and U.K. had the men under investigation.

The arrests followed what British media described as a chance encounter by a farmer driving home from a party just after midnight Sunday. She spotted three white vans blocking a road near the base and then saw a group of men wearing balaclavas running to hide, according to those reports. She drove away and called police. The farmer told the BBC on Monday that her first calls to Ministry of Defence police went unanswered. “I think it was pure luck that I arrived in the village at a similar time to the vans,” she said. “I’m absolutely staggered that it was left to me, as a member of the public, to see and report this.” She criticized security services for lax security around the base and for leaving residents exposed.

U.K. Defense Secretary Wes Streeting said he was grateful for the woman’s actions but told reporters she had only “a partial picture.” American and British security officials were aware of a growing threat to the base in recent weeks, the Journal reported.

Images broadcast Sunday showed five shirtless men being arrested by counterterrorism officers while a robotic bomb-detection crew searched the three white vans. Large black canisters sat on the road nearby.

Security officials suspect U.S. B-1 bombers stationed at the base were a likely target. U.S. bombers at Fairford have flown “defensive” sorties in the Middle East conflict under an arrangement the UK government approved after initially barring U.S. bombing missions from the base. The use of RAF Fairford has been a source of political controversy with the Trump administration; the earlier decision to bar bombing missions drew public rebukes from Trump. The UK later changed tack, allowing the U.S. to launch “defensive” sorties from UK military sites to protect partners across the Middle East.

Both Iran and Russia have regularly used proxies — usually disaffected young local men — to carry out attacks or acts of sabotage across Europe in recent years.

This summer, the UK government said a series of arson and vandalism attacks on Jewish sites, including synagogues, were directed by Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps. The attacks, which also took place across several European countries, were claimed by an Islamist group called the Islamic Movement of the Companions of the Right. The group turned out to be a front organization used by the Revolutionary Guard to target Jewish communities, according to the government. The attacks included the firebombing of Jewish ambulances in London and were directed via young people hired online to carry out arson campaigns against designated targets.

Last year, a group of pro-Palestinian activists broke into the U.K.’s biggest military air base, Brize Norton in Oxfordshire, and sprayed RAF planes with red paint.