Burnham’s acknowledgment that Iran played a role in this plot has started a sequence of events that may take on a life of their own.
With one possibly state-supported terrorist event dominating international headlines, we shouldn’t let the last possibly state-supported terrorist event slip into obscurity.
In the hours following the sprawling police operation that broke up a likely terrorist plot targeting RAF Fairford over the weekend, London devoted most of its energies to assuring the world that they had no concrete evidence linking Iran to the plotters. That ambiguity conflicted with what we were hearing from other Western officials.
At the same time, Secretary of State Marco Rubio claimed that the thwarted attack was the work of “a foreign actor,” and Donald Trump claimed that the suspects had been “under investigation.” Indeed, according to Benjamin Netanyahu, the plot should have been on Britain’s radar because Israeli intelligence had given the U.K. a heads-up. “We gave the Brits the intel that there was going to be an attack, and it’s an Iranian-sponsored attack, and pretty much the next day they slapped sanctions on us,” he complained.
Netanyahu’s consternation is warranted. The confusion that followed the plot’s breakup largely stems from how British officials handled it and how the public and the press interpreted their actions. According to the AP, for example, a court’s “decision to bail the suspects — and the fact that residents who were evacuated have started to return home — suggested that no viable explosives were found.”
The AP’s readers twisted that inference into an acknowledgment that nothing really happened here — nothing, at least, that rises to the level of an act of war against the United Kingdom by the Islamic Republic of Iran. At most, this might have been a botched plot by some amateurs, perhaps even “British nationalists.” More likely, it was rank criminality — perhaps mere fuel theft, as the suspects were found with unusual quantities of gasoline in their three vans.
In the hours since, however, Britain’s Labour government has been far less coy about the nature of this attempted attack.
“There are strong indications that Iran played a part in what happened over the weekend at RAF Fairford,” Prime Minister Andy Burnham told the BBC on Wednesday. “We will say more in due course, but we can confirm our belief that we believe Iran to have played a part.”
Even that statement was a little too weaselly for . . . the left-of-center Liberal Democrats’ foreign affairs spokesman, Calum Miller. “If confirmed, the UK should expel all Iranian ‘diplomats’ who have assisted acts of terror on UK soil — up to and including the Iranian ambassador,” he said in a statement.
If the sentiments Miller expressed are indicative of the British left, it’s reasonable to expect that the British right — which has been cleaning up in local elections of late — is similarly incensed. That reaction should lead us to revisit the implication promulgated by New York Times reporter Michael Shear, who speculated that confirmed Iranian involvement in the attack would lead the British to turn against their own government for offending the Islamic Republic. Perhaps Britons do still retain the instinct toward self-preservation.
The investigation into the five British nationals arrested in connection with the plot continues, despite their release on bail. According to the The Times, police are still determining whether the group was engaged in surveillance, testing security in the area, conducting a “dry run,” or executing a mature plot. But establishing that the suspects were, knowingly or unwittingly, acting on behalf of a foreign actor can be difficult.
The one-time head of the U.K.’s National Counter Terrorism Security Office, Chris Phillips, explained how terror-sponsoring states recruit assets in the West:
“They go onto the dark web, and they post, ‘Would someone like to do a job and make 10,000 pounds?’, as an example,” he said.
The person who carries out the job is often “four or five rungs down the line”, with no direct link to Iran or Russia.
Sometimes, state terrorism sponsors will utilize existing criminal gangs, like Sweden’s Foxtrot network, to enlist mercenaries in their attacks on Western assets, Israeli diplomatic facilities, and sites where Jews gather.
That degree of separation provides Iran, Russia, or any other state sponsor of terrorism with a level of plausible deniability that, for some reason, satisfies far too many Western governments. But Burnham’s acknowledgment that Iran played a role in this plot has started a sequence of events that may take on a life of their own. Indeed, the implications should be clear.
The United Kingdom and the United States were targeted in a terrorist plot on British soil by entities in league with and likely directed by elements within the Islamic Republic of Iran. We shouldn’t have to dwell much on what that means or the consequences that, by rights, Iran’s actions should beget.