Anyone who assumed that President Trump and his deputies were unreliable narrators — and, therefore, dismissed the administration’s early claims that the attempted terrorist attack on RAF Fairford in the U.K. was linked to Iran — probably encountered cognitive dissonance when Britain’s center-left prime minister confirmed Trump’s account. The subsequent arrest of a British-Iranian dual national in connection with that plot would appear to indicate that those arrested outside the air base were not just fuel thieves.
With this experience in mind, it would be wise to consider the possibility that the president may be letting us all in on the intelligence to which he is privy in relation to the thwarted hijacking of an Israel-bound airliner this week:
Trump on whether Iran was involved in Flydubai plane incident:
I would say the answer, based on what I’m hearing, is yes, but we’re working on it right now. pic.twitter.com/6zWm8SbcJN
— Clash Report (@clashreport) October 1, 2026
Trump isn’t alone in contending that Iran played a role in this potentially catastrophic plot:
BREAKING | A senior UAE official tells me: “We are not 100% certain yet, but there is a growing assessment that Iran was responsible for the incident.”
The injured Indian pilot is already in the UAE, the official says. The pilot suspected of carrying out the attack will be…
— דרור בלאזאדה | Dror Balazada (@DBalazada) October 1, 2026
These are extremely preliminary assessments, and they should be treated as such. What’s more, they conflict with the initial statements from Israeli officials who, for now, believe that the Omani national who stabbed the plane’s captain and attempted to take over the aircraft was a “lone wolf” who underwent “a process of religious radicalization in recent years.”
Perhaps Western security services are getting jittery. The elevated threat from Iran, as the Islamic Republic descends into blockade-induced penury, seems to have everyone on edge. But perhaps Iran did have its hand in this attempted hijacking, just as it seems to have had some level of operational control over the attempted attack in England. If so, Iran has now been linked to two potentially serious terrorist events — mass casualty events, had they succeeded — in the space of a week that is not yet over.
The civilized world got lucky in the U.K. and in the skies over the United Arab Emirates. But luck runs out. If you’re in a position to take as many shots on goal as Iran has in such a short period, you’ll eventually get one past the keeper.