Police were alerted to three suspicious vehicles near RAF Fairford in the early hours of 27 September, setting off a major operation around the Gloucestershire base. Dozens of homes in the nearby village of Whelford were evacuated as officers established a large cordon.
Officers found gasoline in three vans linked to the initial suspects. They found no explosives.
Seven men in their 20s were arrested on suspicion of terror offences. Six are British nationals and one is a dual U.K.-Iranian citizen. All were later released on bail, and no one has been charged.
Prime Minister Andy Burnham told MPs that the incident was “almost certainly directed by Iran's Islamic Revolutionary Guard”. He said Britain would impose further sanctions on Iran and added: “We will not tolerate these threats on our soil”.
Ed Miliband, the foreign secretary, summoned Iran’s ambassador in response. He said the meeting was intended to make clear that “Britain will not tolerate threats on our soil”, and described attempts to undermine UK security “through its criminal networks, proxy groups and state-backed malign activity is unacceptable”.
Iran’s ambassador to the UK, Seyed Ali Mousavi, denied that Tehran had any role and said it was willing to cooperate with British authorities.
Shabana Mahmood, the home secretary, said the likely coordinator was a “known individual based in Iran”. She said the incident at Fairford “speaks to a wider trend”.
The Foreign Office sanctioned two Iranians, including the head of the regime’s counterespionage operations. Both face travel bans and asset freezes.
Britain then joined 28 other countries in a statement condemning Iranian “lethal plotting, arson, sabotage, cyber-attacks, and other hybrid activities”. The countries included the US, Canada, Australia, France and Germany.
Marco Rubio, the US secretary of state, discussed “holding Iran to account for its actions and of continued collaboration to secure US assets in the United Kingdom” in a call with Miliband. He later told Fox News that the incident “clearly involve[d] the hands of a foreign actor”.
RAF Fairford, in the Cotswolds, has served as a forward operating location for the US Air Force for decades. In recent months, the US had flown B-1 and B-52 bombers from the base for the Middle East after the UK approved an American request to use it for defensive strikes on Iran.
In July, Iran said that “any base used for aggression against Iranian territory constitutes a legitimate target for our forces”.
The US subsequently withdrew all of its bombers, about a dozen B-1s, from RAF Fairford to their home stations on American soil.
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