Three Iran-backed agents are suspected of terrorist plots in Europe

It was a confusing few news days.

In dramatic fashion, five men in balaclavas were arrested next to the RAF Fairford military air base in the English Cotswolds at the end of September this year. According to the newspaper headlines, they had planned to blow up the airfield.

Residents were evacuated, Prime Minister Andy Burnham emphasized the seriousness of the situation and the US flew all its bombers home from the base.

A couple of days later, the men were released without explanation. It also emerged that one of them called the police himself.

Now three men are charged with remotely orchestrating the averted attack as well as twenty other attacks, including arson attacks against synagogues and Jewish ambulances in London.

The US Department of Justice has published the men's names and writes that they acted on behalf of Harakat Ashab al-Yamin al-Islamia, which translates to Companions of the Right Hand. HAYI, as it is abbreviated, is an Islamist group that was formed a couple of years ago, but was dormant until the US and Israel launched their airstrikes against Iran in February this year. After that, they began to "order" attacks against targets in the UK above all, but also elsewhere in Europe, by agents on the spot.

Exactly what the attack plan against RAF Fairford air base looked like and what went wrong is not known.

According to the US authorities, there are links to the Iranian Revolutionary Guard. One of the accused men was arrested in Turkey already in May this year after paying the equivalent of approximately SEK 30,000 in cryptocurrency to a contact in the United States to place a bomb at a synagogue in New York. He was extradited to the United States and, during the trip, allegedly told FBI agents about his close relationship with Iran's late Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei, who was killed in an airstrike in February. From inside the detention center in New York, he has managed to keep in touch with the group within HAYI and continue to order terrorist attacks.

The other two men are being charged in absentia and are believed to be inside Iran.

On Tuesday, the US Department of Justice published a photo of the two sitting in front of a map of London. Via video call, in April they are said to have directed attacks against Jewish targets in the British capital. In one call, for example, they urged a man to throw a homemade explosive device at a synagogue in Harrow in the north with the words: "light it up like a Christmas tree".

Exactly what the attack plan against RAF Fairford air base looked like and what went wrong is not known. But one of the men, believed to be in Iran, is accused of ordering a group of men in England to drive vans loaded with petrol drums to Fairford, before one of them became concerned and called the police.

The US has continued to expand its military presence in the region around the Strait of Hormuz. Many have seen it as a sign that President Donald Trump, now after the midterm elections, could be in the process of resuming the war against Iran.

Mohsen Rezaei, head of Iran's National Security Council, said on Wednesday that Tehran would strike US bases if it came true. He also included bases that the US uses in other countries or in Europe.

Downing Street insists British air bases are secure. At the same time, they have announced an investment of 470 million pounds, roughly 6 billion Swedish kronor, over the next four years to strengthen security.