Three Iran-backed suspects plotted attacks including RAF Fairford incident, US says

What the report says

The US Department of Justice has unsealed an indictment charging three alleged Iran-backed operatives with involvement in plots across the US and Europe, including what it described as a terrorist plan connected to the September incident near RAF Fairford in Gloucestershire, England. BBC World News reports that the men named are Iranian Mohsen Mohajeri, Iraqi national Mohammad Ali al-Hassani and dual Iranian-Iraqi citizen Mohammad Baqer Saad Dawood al-Saadi.

According to the DOJ allegations, one of the men continued to communicate with contacts from prison in New York, while the other two were said to be operating from Iran. The department said the RAF Fairford plot involved preparatory surveillance, arranging transport, and obtaining items such as fuel and possible chemical accelerants. It also alleged that vans were disguised to look like commercial vehicles and driven toward the base on 26 September, before at least two were stopped by a security roadblock. Police later declared a major incident after suspicious vans were reported near the airfield; no explosives were found, but petrol was seized.

The US says the men were also tied to other attacks in Europe carried out under a pseudonym for a purported new group. Iran has denied involvement in the RAF Fairford incident. The case matters because it highlights continuing tensions over alleged Iran-linked activity in Europe and the US, and because the base has been a strategic site for US air operations for decades.