Five men remained in custody in Britain on Monday after a pre-dawn security operation shut down roads and evacuated dozens of homes near RAF Fairford, the Gloucestershire air base from which American B-1B bombers have flown missions against Iran since the spring. British counterterrorism police said the men, arrested in the early hours of Sunday, are suspected of preparing an act of terrorism, though officials cautioned Monday that no explosives had yet been confirmed and no link to Iran had been established.
The operation began just before 1 a.m. Sunday when the Metropolitan Police received a call about three trucks moving toward the base's perimeter. Officers stopped the vehicles, two of which were later photographed by television crews with their rear doors open and dark cargo spread on the road nearby. The Army's Explosive Ordnance Disposal unit was called in, and a roughly 400-meter cordon was thrown up around the site while bomb-disposal robots examined the trucks. About 85 nearby households were evacuated as a precaution and had not yet been allowed to return by Monday morning.
An investigation "in its early stages"
Vicki Evans, the senior national coordinator for counterterrorism policing, told reporters that officers were still working to establish exactly what the men had been planning.
We are in the early stages of an investigation, and five men remain in custody.
Vicki Evans, Counter Terrorism Policing
All five are being held under Britain's Terrorism Act 2000, which allows suspects to be detained without charge for up to 14 days, far longer than the 24-hour limit that applies to ordinary arrests, giving investigators an extended window to search the vehicles and trace the men's movements.
Prime Minister Andy Burnham, appearing at a hastily arranged briefing, thanked police, soldiers and the evacuated residents for their patience and urged the public not to get ahead of the facts. President Trump, asked about the arrests during an Oval Office appearance, credited British authorities and suggested the plot had targeted port infrastructure.
They were looking to do big damage to our port, and working with the British worked out great.
President Donald Trump
The Pentagon said Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth had spoken by phone with his British counterpart, Wes Streeting, about the incident.
A base at the center of the Iran campaign
RAF Fairford has operated under a British-owned, U.S.-run arrangement dating to the Cold War, but it has taken on new significance since March, when three B-1B Lancer bombers were deployed there to strike Iranian missile sites threatening shipping in the Strait of Hormuz. That deployment has made the base, and the Gloucestershire villages around it, a more prominent potential target; Iranian officials have said in the past that bases used to strike Iranian territory are legitimate targets for retaliation, though British and American officials stressed Monday that investigators had drawn no formal connection between the arrests and Tehran.
None of the five men has been publicly identified, and police have not disclosed their nationalities or ages. Officers are continuing to search for a suspected bomb-making location and are trying to determine whether anyone beyond the five detained men was involved, according to British broadcasters covering the investigation. Forensic teams spent Sunday and Monday combing the impounded trucks and the surrounding fields for evidence.
The arrests come five months into the U.S. air campaign against Iranian military targets, a conflict that has already strained security services on both sides of the Atlantic and unsettled global shipping through the Strait of Hormuz. Coverage of the cordon and evacuation noted that Fairford, in rural Gloucestershire roughly 85 miles west of London, has rarely seen this scale of security response even during earlier deployments of American aircraft.
For now, the evacuated households have been told to expect to remain out of their homes at least through Monday night while the Army's ordnance teams complete their sweep. Scotland Yard said it would provide an update once the searches are complete, and officials in Washington and London both signaled that any charges would likely take days, given the extended detention window under the Terrorism Act. Follow-up reporting indicated British officials were also examining whether the men had any wider network of support.
