The British prime minister says now that there are "solid indications" of Iranian involvement in the airbase incident

LondonBetween Tuesday night and Wednesday afternoon, there have been two new plot twists in the increasingly tangled story of the alleged attack on the RAF Fairford base. This Wednesday afternoon, in statements to several British media outlets, Prime Minister Andy Burnham endorsed the hypothesis put forward by United States President Donald Trump and his Secretary of State, Marco Rubio, regarding a possible Iranian involvement in the incident.

Burnham asserted that "there is solid evidence that Iran had some role in what happened this weekend," which shattered the idyllic tranquility of the Cotswolds region, 160 kilometers west of London. Iran denied any involvement on Monday in a statement from its embassy in London. Even so, the premier remarked that the police investigation is ongoing, that it is "complex and serious," and that while he could not "go into details," he maintained that he would not make such a claim "lightly."

The second surprising element was provided this Wednesday by the newspaper The Times. According to the newspaper, one of the five initially detained –all released on bail on Monday– called emergency services (999) almost an hour before the local farmer in the area did. It was this second call that ended up triggering a large-scale police operation due to the suspicion of a possible attempted terrorist attack against the air base.

The mystery is growing and many more questions are accumulating, with no precise answers for the moment. Neither what the detainees –aged between 23 and 25– were doing around a high-security facility, key to United States operations in the war with Iran, nor if they were planning an attack or a sabotage there. Nor what concrete evidence exists to reinforce both Burnham's claims and those of the American president and his Secretary of State.

One hour difference

According to emergency services records, the neighbor's call—after seeing that three vans were blocking access to her property, and detecting a group of hooded men wearing balaclavas—took place early Sunday morning, at 01:36 hours. In fact, this was her second attempt to raise the alarm. The first, when she called the Ministry of Defence military police directly, who oversee security at the base, was not answered. The suspect's call, according to The Times, took place at 00:45 hours.

The London newspaper's information, however, does not specify whether the call from one of the suspects—who remain under investigation—was motivated by a desire to sow chaos or if the man had doubts about whether to proceed with a specific plan. A plan, moreover, for which there is also no indication that it caused the police to keep the suspects under arrest in application of anti-terrorism laws, before handing them over to judicial authorities. This legislation gives law enforcement fourteen days to question someone before bringing a case before the courts.

Quite the opposite. In fact, this Tuesday evening, investigators defended the decision to release them on bail. They also revealed that, in the search of the three vans they used to travel to the area, they did not find any explosive devices. They only found a certain amount of gasoline which, in itself, does not necessarily indicate criminal activity.

Scotland Yard Assistant Commissioner Laurence Taylor, head of UK Counter Terrorism Policing, justified the release: "I understand why this development may have surprised many people, but I would like to reiterate that it is a decision taken within the framework of the investigation and based on experience and a careful consideration of the powers available to the police".

Taylor added that his teams "have been working quickly to investigate the circumstances" related to the incident, including the search of several addresses in London, where the suspects reside.

Donald Trump's misunderstanding

The one who has not understood the police decision is Donald Trump. The Republican president said on Monday: "I am surprised that they have been released. I would not have done it. Look, [the British secret services] have acted very well. They have worked very closely with us. We know everything about them [the detainees]. We would not have released them". Trump had already commented hours earlier: "We had been tracking them for a long time and finally we have caught them". And his head of diplomacy, Marco Rubio, followed the same path in statements to the Fox network: "Clearly there is the hand of a foreign actor" behind it, he stated.

Perhaps Donald Trump was referring to another surveillance operation underway? This is the hypothesis that this Wednesday was launched on BBC radio by the former agent of London's Metropolitan Police and former national coordinator for counter-terrorism policing Nick Aldworth. "[The president] could have been talking about another matter", he said on the program Today, while recalling that MI5, the United Kingdom's domestic secret service, has some 800 investigations open simultaneously, "and some have an international dimension". What Aldworth has no doubts about is that the detainees "would not have been released if there were indications that would allow for a terrorism charge to be brought".