The British were narrowly spared an opportunity to once again display their profound civilizational insecurity.
From the prime minister on down, authorities in the U.K. are asking the British public and international observers alike to avoid speculating about the motives of the five men in custody today after they were arrested in connection with a potential terrorist plot. Unfortunately for London, the case invites speculation. At the moment, most appear to believe that the Islamic Republic of Iran was behind what might have been a devastating attack on a British military facility.
Early Sunday morning, U.K. authorities received a tip from a local farmer who saw a group of hooded or balaclava-clad men acting suspiciously in the woods near England’s Royal Air Force Base Fairford. A frantic manhunt followed as British security services fanned out, arresting the five men while evacuating dozens of local households in the search for other plotters. In their sweep, investigators reportedly uncovered material consistent with improvised explosive devices, and the plotters’ proximity to an airbase used by U.S. forces to execute raids on Iranian targets leaves little doubt about their intended target.
U.S. and U.K. officials have not yet accused the Islamic Republic or its terrorist proxies of supporting the operation, but Iran has been linked to recent attacks on sites in Europe, and Tehran warned the U.K. earlier this year that it would face consequences for allowing American sorties to originate from its territory. Still, according to the Telegraph, an “Iran-linked motive was considered the most likely possibility.”
The New York Times, in its reporting on these potentially momentous developments, perfectly captured the torpor in which Britain finds itself. “If it turns out Iran was linked to an attempted attack on the British base,” the Times reported, “it will likely add to the public’s deep skepticism about the war.”
Now, as a matter of analysis, Times reporter Michael Shear is probably right. “In one survey from March, about three quarters of the respondents expressed concern over the war’s impact on Britain’s security,” he observed. “In the same survey, more than 80 percent expressed concern about the conflict’s consequences for the British economy.”
In all likelihood, the British people would have reacted to an Iran-directed attack on its soil against its foremost ally by blaming everyone except the Islamic Republic. They could be expected to turn inward, heap opprobrium on its baleful Labour-led government for inviting the wrath of the Islamic world, and complain of how Britain’s complacency rendered attacks like these inevitable. Perhaps the terror was even justified. Maybe the British people and their armed forces deserved it.
In other words, the British were narrowly spared an opportunity to once again display their profound civilizational insecurity. It’s hard to think of a better illustration of the malaise that has descended across the Isles than the presumption that the U.K. would respond to a state-sponsored Islamist terror attack on its territory by assuming they had asked for it.
Charlie Cooke has written with unsparingly and eloquently about the U.K.’s descent into geopolitical irrelevance as a result of London’s diminished ambition. A nation with a healthy political culture and an instinct toward self-preservation might respond to a state-directed terror plot like this with some consternation. It might resolve to conclude that the U.S. is correct in its belief that the Islamic Republic is an acute threat to strategic security. It could summon the resolve to meet that threat where it lives, imbued with just enough confidence to impose consequences on a nation that would threaten its people and its allies as Iran has.
Instead, the Times assumes that the British national covenant is so enervated that its government cannot even be moved to defend its citizens against a foreign attack. And the Times is probably right.