Shortly after authorities on Sunday foiled what appears to have been a planned terror attack targeting a British military base with a large American presence, Prime Minister Andy Burnham urged people not to speculate about who was behind it.
“The investigation remains ongoing,” he said. He asked British residents to let the police “establish the full facts.”
Just what happened near the perimeter of the sprawling air base, R.A.F. Fairford, in southern England, remains murky at best. But it has already raised serious questions about the security of the site, and how the suspects were able to get so close to it.
Investigators arrested five men on suspicion of terrorism in the early hours of Sunday morning, and a bomb disposal robot spent most of Sunday cautiously examining three white vans while 85 families living nearby were evacuated from their homes.
British counter terrorism police, who are leading the investigation, said in a statement on Monday that all five men were in their early 20s and were British nationals from London. The police have not named the men, in line with British policing rules that grant anonymity to suspects until they are charged.
A local farmer told the BBC that she called the police after seeing a large group of hooded and masked men in the fields near the base early on Sunday morning. The farmer, whom the BBC did not identify, said she was shocked that it was left to her as a member of the public to see and report the men.
Her timeline appeared to conflict with the one given out by the police. She told the BBC that she called the local emergency number at 1:36 a.m. on Sunday. Police have said that they received their first call at 12:45 a.m. and that the men were arrested shortly after.
Wes Streeting, the British defense secretary, praised the farmer in an interview with BBC radio on Monday morning, while suggesting that she had only a limited picture of what had unfolded.
“I want to pay tribute to that member of the public for her vigilance,” he said. “She’s done exactly what we would hope a member of the public would do in the situation she found herself in.”
But he added: “She will of course only have had a partial view, and I don’t want to go beyond and stray into kind of operational and security detail at this stage.”
The prime minister’s plea to avoid speculation has done little to dampen conjecture that the suspected plot at R.A.F. Fairford might be linked to the war in Iran. American bombers have conducted long-range strikes on the country from the base since the United States and Israel attacked in February.
“If it is Iran-related, it could be hard-liners trying to undermine Iranian government efforts to negotiate a settlement of the war with the U.S., or proxies such as Hezbollah, unhappy that Iran is not paying sufficient attention to their interests,” said Antonio Giustozzi, a senior research fellow at the Royal United Services Institute, a London-based security think tank.
Another possibility is that Tehran may have “decided negotiations with Trump are going nowhere, despite recent Iranian concessions, and that the pressure has to go up,” Mr. Giustozzi said.
On Monday, Iran’s embassy in London denied any connection to the suspected plot, saying in a statement that it “categorically rejects and strongly condemns” what it called “unfounded and malicious speculations” about the air base incident.
Former Prime Minister Keir Starmer initially refused to allow British bases to be used by the United States to strike Iran, provoking President Trump’s ire. But after Iran conducted drone strikes on British allies across the Middle East, Mr. Starmer changed course and said he would allow what he called “defensive” American strikes on Iran from Fairford. That prompted a furious debate in Britain, including repeated protests near the base by activists who oppose the U.S.-Israeli war.
Mr. Burnham, who replaced Mr. Starmer in July, quietly continued that policy.
On July 23, a few days after Mr. Burnham became prime minister, Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps warned Britain that the government’s decision to allow strikes from one of its bases would make it “a legitimate target for our forces.”
Mr. Trump on Sunday praised the British authorities and said the men arrested had been “looking to do big damage.” He also suggested that the men had been “under investigation,” though officials in Britain did not confirm that they were aware of any threat against the base before the incident.
Several hours after police arrested the men, the British army’s bomb squad deployed robots to examine the three white vans. That work continued well into the evening on Sunday and officials announced that none of the evacuated families would be allowed to return until Monday at the earliest.
On Monday afternoon, a 1,300-foot cordon around the trucks remained in place and many local residents had not yet been allowed to go back.
If it turns out Iran was linked to an attempted attack on the British base, it will likely add to the public’s deep skepticism about the war. In public surveys, large majorities of the British public have said they do not support Mr. Trump’s decision to attack Iran.
In one survey from March, about three quarters of the respondents expressed concern over the war’s impact on Britain’s security. In the same survey, more than 80 percent expressed concern about the conflict’s consequences for the British economy.
In its statement on Monday, the counter terrorism police echoed Mr. Burnham’s request that people not jump to conclusions about the origins of the attempted attack.
“I am very aware of the levels of speculation about the motivation behind this incident, and the geopolitical questions that are being raised,” Vicki Evans, the deputy assistant commissioner for the counter terrorism police, said. “However, I ask that at this time, Counter Terrorism Policing are given the space to work carefully and clearly.”
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