Gloucestershire: It was a woman farmer, returning home late from a party, who may have prevented a major terror attack on the Royal Air Force (RAF) base at Fairford in Gloucestershire in the UK.
Questions are now being asked about whether Iran had any role to play in the planned attack.
RAF Fairford is a forward operating base for US forces in Europe. The UK government has allowed US bombers there to carry out strikes on Iranian missile sites that have been hitting ships in the Strait of Hormuz.
Iran’s Revolutionary Guards had, in July, warned Britain not to let US bombers fly from Fairford, saying any base used to launch attacks would be a legitimate target. Britain had replied that its armed forces were ready to protect the country.
According to reports, the farmer was driving on a country lane in Gloucestershire around 1.30 am when she found her route blocked. Three white vans sat abandoned across the road, with nobody in sight.
As she turned the car around, men in balaclavas broke from the scene and scattered, some into the fields, others through the trees towards RAF Fairford, a few hundred metres away, as reported by The Indian Express.
The farmer did not stop. She drove off, called 999, and warned her neighbours on WhatsApp to lock their doors. Less than 25 minutes later, five men were sitting handcuffed on the road, surrounded by counter-terror police.
The police had declared a major incident By 8 am. police had declared a major incident. As many as 85 homes were evacuated, and army bomb disposal teams were examining the vans behind a 400-metre cordon.
The story had reached the top of government by Sunday evening, with British prime minister Andy Burnham being kept updated. US president Donald Trump had also commented on the matter.
The farmer, meanwhile, counts herself quite lucky. She has since thought about what could have happened had the men tried to stop her car, she told The Telegraph.
It was “pretty incredible” to have had a brush with potential terrorists face to face, she said. The vans looked wrong from the first moment, and the air base had been under a credible terror threat before that night, she added.
The five men were first arrested under the explosives law and then on suspicion of preparing a terrorist act, under section 5 of the Terrorism Act 2000. That allows police to hold them for up to 14 days without charge.
The police have not released the men’s nationalities or set out their lines of inquiry. A source familiar with the investigation told Reuters that an Iran-linked motive is seen as the most likely, while a Russian sabotage plot and an Islamist plot are also being examined.
Trump, meanwhile, told reporters the men were “looking to do big damage” and that the US had them “under view for a long time,” calling the arrests “an amazing job”.
Whitehall sources, however, told The Telegraph the arrests were not a planned operation and were not intelligence-led. The Gloucestershire Police said it only learned the men were in the village of Whelford because of the farmer’s 999 call.
Reuters quoted local councillor Tristan Wilkinson as saying that there was a specific threat from Iranians against the base about six weeks ago, and that surveillance in the area was increased at the time.
Former Army bomb disposal officer Lucy Lewis told The Telegraph the scene had the hallmarks of a large attack. “It’s the real thing,” she said, pointing to black barrels seen beside the vans and saying such loads are often fertiliser-based.
Dr Antonio Giustozzi of the Royal United Services Institute said the set-up looked like a multi-vehicle suicide attack, with one vehicle used to break through each ring of security. He said the attackers would have been unlikely to reach US jets given the base’s defences.
Security was also stepped up at other bases used by the US, with armoured vehicles and soldiers at the gates of RAF Lakenheath and RAF Mildenhall in eastern England, Reuters quoted witnesses as saying.
Burnham said on X that the incident would be “deeply concerning” for local residents and thanked the police and armed forces. Reform UK leader Nigel Farage said the public deserves to be told the truth about the suspects’ identities.
