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Iran one of hostile states that uses proxies to carry out attacks on UK soil
Iran has been linked to attacks and plots on British soil as police investigate possible motives behind the RAF Fairford arrests
The possibility of an Iran link to the explosives arrests near RAF Fairford comes after a series of incidents on UK soil thought to be connected to the Middle Eastern state.
No motive has yet been established for any potential plot near the base, which is used by the US military, reportedly including in its attacks on Iran during the ongoing war between the two nations.
If a vehicle bomb plot were linked to supporters of the Iranian regime, it would mark an escalation since a spate of arson attacks on Jewish sites in London earlier this year.
A group calling itself Harakat Ashab al-Yamin al-Islamia (Hayi), said to be backed by Iran, claimed responsibility for the fires, as well as an incident where a drone was flown in Kensington Gardens near the Israeli embassy, although officials said the device ultimately crashed into a tree.
Iran is one of a number of hostile states, including Russia, that have used proxies to commit crimes on their behalf on UK soil, and support for both Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) and Hayi have been banned in Britain.
The London-based Persian broadcaster Iran International has also been repeatedly targeted with surveillance, and one of its journalists Pouria Zeraati, was stabbed as he walked to his car in Wimbledon, south-west London, in March 2024.
Earlier this year, police said the number of national security cases involving activity by hostile states, including Iran, had increased by 50% in the six months to December 2025.
As it has become harder to get agents into the UK, foreign countries have turned to paying criminals to carry out attacks on their behalf on British soil.
The tactic was used by a Russian-speaking Telegram entity known as El Money, which tasked two men to set fire to a car and two houses connected to Sir Keir Starmer in May last year.
In another case in March 2024, Dylan Earl, 21, from Leicestershire, firebombed a warehouse in Leyton, east London, storing aid for Ukraine, on the orders of the banned Wagner Group, which acts for the Russian state.
The Fairford incident also took place against the backdrop of ongoing war between the US and Iran.
Senior research fellow at the Royal United Services Institute, the UK’s leading defence and security think tank, Antonio Giustozzi, said that the incident could be a warning against further escalation in expectation of potential US strikes.
But he said it could also be hardliners seeking to undermine Iranian government efforts to negotiate a settlement, and warned it was not yet clear whether any suspected plan was meant to be “substantive, or more demonstrative in nature”.
“If it is Iran-related, it could be hardliners trying to undermine Iranian government efforts to negotiate a settlement of the war with the US, or proxies such as Hezbollah, unhappy with Iran is not paying sufficient attention to their interests,” he said.
“But it might also be that Tehran has decided negotiations with Trump are going nowhere, despite recent Iranian concessions, and that the pressure has to go up.
“In Iran, the armed forces have issued the state of maximum alert, in the expectation of US strikes, so this attempted attack might have been intended as a warning against further escalation.”
Defence Secretary Wes Streeting told BBC Radio 4’s Today programme: “The Iranian regime is one that would do harm to our interests and to our allies, given the chance.
“And I’m proud of the work that we do all year, every year to detect and to deter and prevent Iran from carrying out acts of harm.”
He said Foreign Secretary Ed Miliband was right to meet Iran’s foreign minister Abbas Araghchi at a United Nations General Assembly fringe meeting in New York last week.
“It’s important that sometimes you look people in the eye and you have that conversation directly.
“And I think the Foreign Secretary was right to meet his counterpart and to put directly to the regime the position of this Government and our determination to act against any of those who would do us harm.”
Mr Miliband told him “Britain will not tolerate intimidation, threats or hostile activity on UK soil”, according to the Foreign Office.
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