Trump says US 'knows the people' behind RAF Fairford bomber threat

Six suspects released on bail as UK counter-terror probe continues

President Donald Trump said on Monday that a “threat” prompted the United States to pull its B-1 bombers out of RAF Fairford, a Royal Air Force base in the Cotswolds in Gloucestershire that the UK has approved for US defensive strikes on Iran.

Speaking to reporters outside the White House as he departed for Nebraska, Trump was asked whether a “specific threat” had led the US to remove its bombers from the British airbase. “Yeah I think we can say that,” Trump replied. “They didn’t fly out by accident. There were some threats. And rather than tempting the enemy, we’ll capture the enemy and beat the enemy. But why should we leave them there? So we moved them around a little bit. Not very far.”

Washington, Trump added, “actually knows the people that made the threat,” though he did not identify them.

The Pentagon confirmed on Sunday that it had removed the bombers — thought to be about a dozen B-1s — from the base and returned them to their home stations in America. A No 10 spokesperson insisted on Monday that RAF Fairford was safe and pointed to Trump’s comments the previous week praising the UK’s “police, defence and security services.”

The exact nature of the threat that prompted the aircraft’s removal remains unclear. Sources in Washington told the BBC it might have involved sabotage attempts or efforts to strike the sensitive, expensive aircraft in the event of resumed hostilities with Iran. One source close to the White House pointed to Ukraine’s Operation Spiderweb — a covert drone attack on five Russian bases in June last year — as an example of what an enemy force could do even at a distance. “Whatever they thought it was, it was taken extremely seriously,” the source said.

The bomber withdrawal follows an incident on 27 September in which police were alerted to three “suspicious vehicles” near the airbase. Five men were initially arrested on suspicion of terror offences and subsequently released on bail; a sixth man, a UK-Iranian national, was later arrested and also released on bail. The investigation is being handled by UK counter-terror police.

Administration officials offered differing accounts of the withdrawal. Vice President JD Vance said the bombers had been moved “out of an abundance of caution,” adding that Washington believed Iran was doing what it had “done for 49 years… which is engage in acts of terrorism against the US and against a lot of other people.”

Secretary of State Marco Rubio was more guarded. “It’s not unusual to see movement of assets to different parts of the world based on exercises, redeployments, people changing out and new people coming in, new planes coming in and old planes going out,” Rubio said, adding that the US retained full confidence in the security of all its bases and that British authorities had been “very co-operative” since the incident. Asked earlier in the day whether the decision to pull the bombers was linked to the UK arrests, Rubio said he would not directly tie the two.

Days after the incident, Prime Minister Andy Burnham said there were “strong indications” that Iran had played a part in the incident but did not provide further details. Rubio separately said the incident had “clearly involve[d] the hands of a foreign actor” without elaborating.

Tehran has strongly denied any involvement. In July, Iran said “any base used for aggression against Iranian territory constitutes a legitimate target for our forces.”

Following the release of the first five men, Trump criticised the decision, and US officials suggested Iran could have been involved in the incident. Whitehall sources have not disputed that the decision from Washington to remove the bombers was in response to the incident at the Gloucestershire airbase.

RAF Fairford, near the village of Whelford, has been used as a forward operating location by the US Air Force for decades. In recent months, the US has flown B-1 and B-52 bombers from the base to the Middle East after the UK approved the US request to use it for defensive strikes on Iran.

Trump’s comments on Monday appeared to confirm earlier US media reports that a new threat had led to the bombers’ removal following the 27 September incident.