Shortly after midnight last Sunday morning, a local resident in an English country village outside RAF Fairford contacted the police to inform them that three white vans were parked near her driveway – and that she had seen masked men. Armed police arrived accompanied by sniffer robots on the lookout for explosives. Five Londoners in their early to mid-twenties were subsequently arrested.
RAF Fairford has been the home of American B-1 bombers which have attacked Iran and the Straits of Hormuz. The Americans were allowed to use this RAF base because of its long runway.
With information from British Authorities about this episode still sparse and the five men have been bailed, the immediate suspicion fell upon Iranian intelligence and the Iranian Revolutionary Guards Corps (IRGC), despite a denial from the Iranian Embassy in London.
The US Secretary of State, Marco Rubio, subsequently hinted that ‘a foreign actor…was clearly involved’ but whether this is yet another fantasy, emanating from the Trump White House, has yet to be determined through a methodical investigation.
In the UK, the suspicion is that all this could indeed be part and parcel of ‘a grey, hybrid war involving proxies or individuals who, knowingly or unknowingly’, have been working on behalf of Iran. Are the five young men simply ‘useful idiots’ who have been taken advantage of by hostile forces? Any chain stretching back to Teheran therefore requires a detailed investigation. Following the attack in Golders Green when the Hatzolah ambulances were torched, British Jews are awaiting the outcome because they perceive themselves and their institutions to be a prime target for an attack by the Iranians.
Just a few days before the suspected incident at RAF Fairford, Britain’s new Foreign Secretary, Ed Miliband, met Iran’s foreign minister, Abbas Araghchi, at the UN General Assembly. Miliband warned Araghchi that the UK would ‘not tolerate intimidation, threats or hostile activity on UK soil—including attacks on the British Jewish community’.
While Jews worldwide have been threatened by radicalised Islamists in the wake of the Gaza War — such as the murderous attack on Bondi beach — the planned attacks by Iran are clearly in a different category. For the Iranians, it is not solely Israelis who are the targets but Jews per se. As the academic, Amal Saad-Ghorayeb commented: “Hezbollah’s anti-Judaism is to a considerable extent influenced by Zionism, but it is not contingent upon it.(Hizbu’llah: Politics and Religion)
While the Iranians publicly state that they distinguish between ‘Zionist Jews’ and ‘normative Jews’, the overwhelming majority of Diaspora Jews identify with the State of Israel even if they oppose the current government of Israel. While the number of anti-Zionist Jewish groups remains miniscule, it is clear that Teheran believes that Diaspora Jews are fair game. There is often reference to the Quaranic verse that the strongest opponents ‘in enmity to the believers’ are the Jews.
The Iranian attacks on Diaspora Jews have not suddenly come about as a reaction to the Netanyahu coalition’s assault on Gaza or to Israeli participation in Trump’s war. It has come about because the Islamic Revolution in Iran has long propagated the belief that Jews must be targeted on ideological grounds – one which is framed by and justified by the ayatollahs’ interpretation of Islam.
The Farford incident ironically occurred a week after Judge Daniel Rafecas in Argentina formally charged seven Iranians and one Lebanese man in absentia for the 1994 truck bombing of the AMIAJewish community centre in Buenos Aires. This killed 85 people and injured hundreds. Utilizing a 2025 trial-in-absentia law, Rafecas produced a 648-page report which also froze $500 million in assets for each suspect. While the Iranian Ambassador in Argentina in 1994 was labelled as an accomplice, the report also indicted Mohsen Rabbani, the then Cultural Attache. He has been regarded as the mastermind behind Iranian penetration of Latin America and a central figure in the coordination of acts of terror.
Rabbani had been sent to Argentina in 1983 with the purpose of heading the al-Tauhid mosque in the Floresta neighbourhood of Buenos Aires. His network of followers collected information which was passed on to Iran. This included spotting potential Jewish targets and inquiries about purchasing a Renault Trafic van which was used in the bombing.
In 1994, the Committee for Special Operations, an offshoot of Iran’s Supreme National Security Council, made the decision to approve the attack on AMIA. The Supreme Leader, Ayatollah Khamenei, issued a fatwa which proclaimed the attack as ‘a sacred duty’. Rabbani was suddenly given diplomatic status in the Embassy on the eve of the assault on AMIA.
According to Judge Rafecas, the operational groundwork for the bombing relied on a regional network probably run by Hezbollah operatives. It was anchored in the Triple Frontier — the border area where Ciudad del Este (Paraguay), Foz de Iguazú (Brazil), and Puerto Iguazú (Argentina) all meet.
Aḥmad Vahidi, the head of the IRGC Quds Force between 1988 and 1998, was accused as being the main organiser and perpetrator of the AMIA bombing. The Quds Force has responsibility for all Iranian extra-territorial actions. Vahidi has been the Minister of Defence and Minister of the Interior in previous Iranian governments. Interpol has issued a warrant for his arrest.
Today Vahidi heads the entire IRGC, having assumed the role in March of this year. His predecessors, Hussein Salami and Mohammed Pakpour were both killed in the US and Israeli air strikes on Iran. Regarded as ‘brutal’ in comparison to his predecessors, he was sanctioned by the EU because he was deemed responsible for suppressing the protests over the killing of Mahsa Amini in 2022. Amini had refused to wear the hijab and was probably beaten to death by the morality police.
A member of the IRGC since its inception, Vahidi described the Islamic Revolution in 1979 as ‘a burst of light’ on Iranian Press TV last year. While Vahidi’s main task is to rebuild the IRGC after the US attacks, it is certainly not beyond the realms of possibility – given his history – that many of the incidents in the UK and Europe are Iranian controlled.
Many regard him as the power behind the throne in Teheran and he has laid plans that should the regime fall, the IRGC will continue to operate.
Quite often, the Israeli bombing of Iran and the assault on Hezbollah is telescoped with the attack on Gaza. The difference is that Hamas held hostages which needed to be rescued whereas Iran and Hezbollah did not.
The Iranian regime remains one which is implacably opposed to both Jews and Israelis, to democratic behaviour and the rule of law, to equal treatment of minorities, to respect for the dignity of difference. Its friends are dictators and autocrats from Kim Jong Un’s North Korea to Venezuela’s former ruler, Nicolás Maduro. Its representatives receive garlanded welcomes in Beijing and Moscow. The description of the Iranian regime as posing ‘an existential threat to the state of Israel’ is not an exaggeration.
The masked men around the perimeter fence of RAF Fairford may or may not be ‘actors of a foreign power’ but there is no doubt that the Iranian ayatollahs will not cease their campaign against those who are different and especially against Diaspora Jews.
Jewish Independent 30 September 2026