Potential Iranian drone attack led to exit of U.S. aircraft from British air base

WASHINGTON — The United States abruptly withdrew all 12 B-1 Air Force bombers from an air base in southern England based on new information that commanders received about a potential drone attack ordered by Iran’s Revolutionary Guard, according to U.S. and British officials.

The suspected attack was part of a complex, multipronged Iranian plot to strike aircraft and kill some of the several hundred American personnel stationed at the base, RAF Fairford, the officials said, speaking on the condition of anonymity to discuss operational matters. All of the Air Force bombers were withdrawn over the weekend.

Some of the officials said they believed that the plot was loosely modeled on an audacious attack that Ukraine launched against Russia last year when it smuggled drones deep into the Russian heartland and launched them from semitrucks. The attack destroyed or damaged at least a dozen aircraft, including many of Moscow’s nuclear-capable strategic bombers, on runways in Siberia and Russia’s Far North.

Vice President JD Vance said on Monday that the Pentagon quickly moved the bombers “out of an abundance of caution trying to protect our guys.” He accused Iran of plotting attacks against the United States but stopped short of commenting on any details about the most recent threat.

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“We do feel with some confidence that the Iranians are trying to do what the Iranian state has done for 49 years, which is engage in acts of terrorism against the United States and against a lot of other people as well,” Vance told reporters at Joint Base Andrews before leaving on a trip to Alaska. “We are being extremely cautious.”

President Donald Trump said Monday that people linked to Iran posed a threat to U.S. bombers at the British air base, prompting the order to return them to the United States. “There were some threats,” Trump told reporters. “Why should we leave them there?” he added, referring to the bombers.

The Wall Street Journal earlier reported the drone threat as the reason for the withdrawal.

The sudden pullout of the bombers came a week after British police arrested five men who had been traveling the morning of Sept. 27 in white vans near the base, which has been used by U.S. bombers in the U.S.-Israeli war against Iran. The men were released on bail a day later after authorities did not discover explosives in the vans.

But police have repeatedly said the men remain under investigation, and a British-Iranian dual national was arrested Thursday on suspicion of preparing terrorist acts.

The rushed order to withdraw the bombers was highly unusual. Such moves are rarely made so quickly from an allied air base in a peacetime country thousands of miles from a combat zone.

Indeed, the need to move the bombers from the base was deemed so urgent that some of the planes and their flight crews left while aerial refueling aircraft were still being deployed to support their flights to the United States, U.S. officials said.

Many details about the potential threat that prompted the rapid withdrawal of the Air Force bombers, some of which had arrived just in the past week as part of a regular rotation of forces, remained murky Monday. One U.S. official said the new information was part of the same threat warnings that surfaced three weeks ago, though a sense of urgency spiked over the weekend, alarming commanders.

Prime Minister Andy Burnham said last week that the British government believed Iran played a part in planning the events that led to the arrests. U.S. and British officials, as well as those in Germany and Israel, believe the operation is connected to Iran’s Revolutionary Guard or a separate military headquarters in Tehran. Iran has denied the accusations.

On Monday, Burnham’s spokesperson declined to comment on other nations’ military operations. Asked whether the air base was safe, the spokesperson replied yes and referred to a statement made last week by the British defense secretary, Wes Streeting, who described “tried and tested approaches to defend our bases around the country and throughout the world.”

Authorities have been puzzling over a bizarre set of events swirling around Fairford the past week, including the arrests, the frantic evacuation of 85 homes, a bomb-disposal robot searching the vans for explosives and a national security meeting convened by Burnham.

In July, Iran’s Revolutionary Guard issued a statement warning that allowing the United States to use the base “makes London responsible” for U.S. actions. “Any base used to launch attacks on Iranian territory,” the statement said, “is a legitimate target for our forces.”

In mid-September, U.S. military commanders received a dire warning from U.S. and other Western intelligence agencies, according to U.S. officials briefed on the information: RAF Fairford was the target of a potential Iran-backed attack.

After that warning last month, concern among officials across Europe surged. According to a senior U.S. official, Israel warned Germany that U.S. bases there were at heightened risk, noting the Spangdahlem and Ramstein air bases in particular.