Iran suspicion grows over RAF Fairford arrests, but public proof is missing

Britain and the United States have suggested, without producing public evidence, that Iran may have played a role in two major security incidents this week — arrests near a US-run military base in England and an attack in the cockpit of an Israel-bound FlyDubai plane.

By Friday, however, no confirmed link to Iran had emerged in either case. Britain has not made public any evidence connecting Tehran to the arrests near RAF Fairford, while an official not authorised to speak to the media said there is currently no evidence linking Iran to the cockpit attack. Investigations in both cases are still at an early stage.

If an Iranian link to the arrests in Britain is confirmed, it would underline a strategy Tehran has promoted for decades: using smaller, relatively low-cost attacks to pressure stronger adversaries and create friction among allies. If Iran is found to have played a role in targeting the FlyDubai flight, it would mark a dangerous new step in that approach.

Iran has denied any involvement in Sunday’s arrests near RAF Fairford, which has been used by US bombers to strike Iran. Iranian leaders summoned Britain’s ambassador and called on the British government to provide an official explanation.

Police on Thursday arrested a 25-year-old dual UK-Iranian citizen on suspicion of plotting a terror attack, while five other suspects were released on bail. Detectives said they found a quantity of accelerant, petrol, in vans near the air base, but no explosives. Prime Minister Andy Burnham said the UK sees “strong indications” that Iran played a part in the incident, but did not give details.

Iran has not commented on US President Donald Trump’s suggestion that the FlyDubai co-pilot might have links to Iran. Asked whether he had been briefed about any such links, Trump said, “I would say the answer, based on what I’m hearing, is yes, but we’re working on it right now.” He did not elaborate. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, a strong critic of Iran, has said it is too soon to say.

With governments not sharing key details, including suspects’ identities or possible motives, speculation risks filling the gap. “When you have this kind of gray area where evidence is lacking, there’s a tendency, especially (by) politicians, the media, etc., to attribute everything to Iran,” said Antonio Giustozzi, senior research fellow at the Royal United Services Institute in London. “And much of it is true, but not necessarily all of it is true.”

Giustozzi said the Iranians do not deny that they have cells abroad. He said incidents such as the one at RAF Fairford appear to fit a pattern of attacks meant to apply pressure and signal to US allies that “in this case we did not do anything too terrible, but it wouldn’t be difficult to do something terrible”. But he said he doubted Iran was behind the FlyDubai incident, adding: “In terms of strategy, dragging Israel in now brings zero benefit to Iran and only complicates the situation.”

Iranian officials have openly promoted asymmetric warfare in recent days. “Asymmetric warfare means confronting the enemy’s expensive heavy weapons with lower costs and simpler, but more effective and practical defence equipment, and still achieving victory,” Brig Gen Abolfazl Shekarchi, a senior Iranian military spokesperson, said in comments reported by state-run IRNA. He said such tactics are based on “self-sacrifice, faith and spirituality” and described conventional warfare as vulnerable to this approach.

Tehran turned to that strategy after the 1979 Islamic Revolution cut off military and other support from earlier allies, including the United States. Iran used asymmetric methods, including drones, during the Iran-Iraq war in the 1980s and again during the current war that began with US and Israeli attacks on February 28.

Its tactics have included drone attacks on regional neighbours hosting US bases and attacks on ships trying to pass through the Strait of Hormuz. Small attack boats and mines have also threatened the strait. Iran-backed armed groups have launched attacks in southern Lebanon, Yemen, Gaza and Iraq. The Soufan Center think tank wrote earlier this year: “Tehran understands that it cannot defeat Israel or the United States in a conventional, high-intensity war. Instead, the regime seems to be deploying an asymmetric and attritional response designed not for decisive battlefield victory, but rather endurance and survival.”

Iran has acknowledged some direct military or paramilitary attacks during the war, including against US warships. But the kind of involvement suggested in the FlyDubai and England cases is more indirect, making it harder to prove and easier to deny. The allegations have drawn comparisons with acts of sabotage in Europe that Russia has been widely accused of backing since its full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022. Moscow has denied those accusations.

Tehran has faced similar allegations before. Matthew Levitt of the Washington Institute for Near East Policy wrote last year that, in an effort to “mitigate the risk of retaliatory attacks against Iran, Iranian agents have taken to hiring criminal proxies to carry out attacks at Tehran’s behest”. In one high-profile case, the US Justice Department in November 2024 disclosed an alleged Iranian murder-for-hire plot to kill Trump, charging a man who said he had been tasked by a government official before that month’s election. Iran rejected the report and called it a plot to complicate relations.

More recently, UK officials have said proxies linked to Iran were behind a series of arson and other attacks in Britain and elsewhere in Europe, many targeting the Jewish community or opponents of Iran’s Islamic theocracy. In October 2025, the head of MI5 said the agency had tracked more than 20 “potentially lethal” Iran-backed plots in the previous year. Several suspects, some as young as teenagers, have been charged in the UK over arson attacks targeting synagogues and Jewish ambulances. Officials said such crimes are often carried out for small sums of money, and those arrested may know little or nothing about any link to Iran.

In July, Britain banned the Islamic Movement of the Companions of the Right, or IMCR, saying it was an Iran proxy group behind the attacks. The group emerged online earlier this year and has claimed responsibility for synagogue attacks in Belgium and the Netherlands. For now, though, no confirmed evidence has been made public tying Iran to either this week’s arrests near RAF Fairford or the FlyDubai cockpit attack, and investigators in both cases are still working to establish the facts.