US charges three over Iran-linked plot to drive fuel-laden vans at RAF Fairford
A New York indictment unsealed on 10 November says three vans carrying fuel barrels and fake company decals headed for the US-used British airbase on 26 September. The same three men are tied to around 18 attacks across Europe.
Three vans, barrels of fuel, and decals made to look like a fuel delivery firm’s. That is how federal prosecutors in Manhattan describe the plot against RAF Fairford, the Gloucestershire airbase the US Air Force flies from. The superseding indictment announced on 10 November by the US Attorney’s Office for the Southern District of New York charges three men and says they acted for the Iraqi militia Kataib Hezbollah and Iran’s Revolutionary Guard.
The defendants are a 32-year-old Iraqi-Iranian dual national, held in the US since May, a 48-year-old Iranian the indictment calls a Revolutionary Guard operative, and a 35-year-old Iraqi. Prosecutors say the last two were in Iran while the plot unfolded. Everything in the indictment is an allegation, and all three are presumed innocent.
What happened at RAF Fairford on 26 September?
According to the indictment, the 35-year-old paid someone around 22 August to watch the base perimeter. In September he allegedly paid others to get hold of vans and fuel barrels, look into chemical accelerants and buy metal objects to use as shrapnel. The vans were dressed with decals for a fuel distributor and a pool-supplies business.
On 26 September three vans set off for the base. At least two were turned back at a security roadblock. Early the next morning British police recovered all three and arrested the people inside. Within days, the US had moved every one of its B-1 bombers out of Fairford.
The oddest detail is how the plot was allegedly run. The eldest defendant was sitting in a New York jail and, prosecutors say, passed coded instructions through phone calls to his family. On a 24 September call he allegedly told them to give money to “Ali” so that “we can do it”. Three days later the vans were at the gate.
What other attacks are the three men accused of?
Prosecutors link them to about 18 attacks in Europe in spring 2026, claimed by a front group, roughly seven of them in the UK. One was the stabbing of two Jewish men in London, one a dual US-British citizen. Others were arson attacks on synagogues, Jewish schools and Israeli-linked businesses elsewhere in Europe. The 32-year-old is also accused of trying to bomb a synagogue in Manhattan.
There are eight counts in all, among them material support for terrorist organisations and conspiracy to bomb a place of public use, which carries a possible life sentence. British police had already charged two UK men in October with national security offences tied to Fairford.
The case lands with Washington and Tehran in open confrontation. Earlier this month the US struck Iran’s Qeshm island in the Strait of Hormuz, and prosecutors frame the European attacks as retaliation for the war on Iran.
Image: Jim van de Burgt / Wikimedia Commons (CC0)
