Every year in July, the meadows of the huge Townsend cow farm, about 500 meters from the English village of Whelford, are filled with thousands of aviation fans who pitch their tents there to watch the most famous aerobatic festival in the world, the Royal International Air Tattoo, which is held at the neighboring Fairford base.
Since last March, those same meadows have also been visited by curious onlookers, fans and the media eager to watch the landing and takeoff of the 15 American B-1s and six B-52s (the latter capable of launching atomic bombs) destined for Fairford to bomb Iran. The de-escalation of the conflict that began in June has led to the withdrawal of a large part of these aircraft. But there are still at least 12 American B-1s at the base, which, according to some reports, carried out their last action against Iran on July 21. Two days later, the Iranian Revolutionary Guard declared that if Fairford was used in an invasion, "it will be considered a legitimate target."
Today, Sunday, the Townsend farm is empty. Its owners and workers were evacuated last night by British authorities. The entrances are closed, blocked by armed police. The same thing happens in the rest of Whelford, a typical British village of just 70 houses, located three-quarters of an hour by car from the city of Gloucester. Its 250 inhabitants were evacuated at night to the Cirencester sports center, 15 kilometers away. They will not be able to return to their homes until tomorrow morning at the earliest.
The evacuations and closure are due to a possible attempted terrorist attack against the base, which could have been organized by Iran, according to police sources cited by the British press.
US President Donald Trump has noted that the suspects had been in the United States' crosshairs "for a long time" and said that "they wanted to cause great damage to our base." "The collaboration with the British worked wonderfully," he told the press upon his arrival in Chicago for a golf tournament.
It all started at a quarter to one in the morning, the police received, according to the official version, "a phone call" warning them that "three suspicious vehicles were heading towards the base" on the road that goes from Whelford to the town of Fairford.
The result has been five people arrested, about whom no further information has been released. The arrests were carried out on the basis of the Explosives Law, which punishes the possession of explosives, components or substances that can be used to manufacture them, which gives an idea, at least in theory, of what was allegedly in the cars. But, once arrested, the five suspects have been investigated under a crime defined in article 5 of the Anti-Terrorism Law, which pursues everything from planning to the intention to commit terrorist acts. This is "a major incident", according to Gloucestershire County Police, where the base is located, although the investigation has been taken over by the Anti-Terrorism Police.
The road from Whelford to Fairford is closed, and an Army robot has been examining cars for hours for explosives. The Anti-Terrorist Police have taken over the investigation, although officially the incident has not been classified as an act of that nature. According to British media reports, security inside the air base has been very visibly taken over by American soldiers. The Fairford base is at the Delta security level, the highest, and others where there are US units are at Charlie, the second highest.
The incident is an unexpected political blow for the British Prime Minister, Andy Burnham, in part because it occurred precisely on the first day of the Annual Conference (the equivalent of a Congress) of the Labor Party, of which he is a part. That means Burnham will have to speak out, despite her well-demonstrated aversion to getting involved in international politics, exactly the opposite of Starmer.
Burnham, furthermore, is further to the left than Starmer and, although her meeting with Donald Trump, this week within the framework of the United Nations General Assembly in New York, was frankly cordial, both have enormous differences of principle, especially with regard to Iran, Israel and Palestine. The US president has made statements that could be considered openly unfriendly - if not constituting interference in the internal affairs - of the United Kingdom, especially when two weeks ago he declared himself in favor of the reunification of Ireland, which would mean that Northern Ireland would cease to be British. To make things a little better, Trump has refused to clarify his opinion regarding Scottish independence.
The prime minister has also cooled London's relations with Israel, by banning the purchase of goods and services produced in Israeli colonies in the West Bank, where his foreign minister, Ed Miliband - who is Jewish - has accused Tel Aviv of carrying out "ethnic cleansing". The Israeli Government responded by closing the British consulate in Jerusalem, and its ultranationalist Security Minister, Itamar Ben Gvir, of the Jewish Power party, has declared that "it is time for the State of Israel to publicly recognize that the Malvinas Islands are occupied Argentine territory."
Fairford is the only base in Europe equipped for use by the American B-1, B-2 and B-52 bombers. On March 1, just one day after Israel and the United States launched war against Iran, the Labor government of then Prime Minister Keir Starmer bowed to pressure from Donald Trump and authorized its use in the conflict, but only to carry out "defensive" missions. That condition was intended to make it appear that the planes were not going to be used as part of the offensive but only to protect non-belligerent countries that were being attacked by Iran. That included the United Kingdom, whose Akrotiri base in Cyprus had been hit by an Iranian drone on March 7.
In practice, and given that Iranian defense is completely decentralized, it is impossible to know which military installations are dedicated to attacking third countries, so the nuance imposed by Starmer had only symbolic value. Fairford thus became the only base in Europe that was used to carry out attack actions in the war. The joint British-American base at Diego Garcia in the Indian Ocean also has the capacity to host bombers, but its role in the attack on Iran remains secret.
Since Iran, on the one hand, and the United States and Israel, on the other, began de-escalating the war in June, Fairford's role has diminished, as the intensity of clashes between those countries has fallen, with the exception of the increase in fighting caused by the threat from Tehran in July. An Iranian action against Fairford would be contradictory to the policy of Iran, which on Saturday offered the United States the reopening of the Strait of Hormuz, which US President Donald Trump immediately rejected.
