US charges three men over alleged Iran-backed plot to strike RAF Fairford

The indictment that reaches from a New York jail cell to an English air base

Federal prosecutors in Manhattan unsealed an eight-count superseding indictment on Tuesday 10 November, charging three men with terrorism-related offences for what they describe as a campaign of nearly 20 attacks and attempted attacks across Europe and the United States, in support of Kata'ib Hizballah and Iran's Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps. The men are Mohammad Baqer Saad Dawood al-Saadi, 32, a dual Iranian-Iraqi national; Mohsen Mohajeri, 48, an Iranian national; and Mohammad Ali al-Hassani, 35, an Iraqi national.

Only al-Saadi is in custody, held in a federal jail in New York since May on charges over about 18 attacks in Europe and a synagogue bombing attempt in New York. He pleaded not guilty in June, yet prosecutors say he passed coded messages to the other two men from his cell, through calls with his mother and sister in Iraq. The Fairford allegation ran from August into late September: al-Hassani allegedly paid associates in Britain to survey the base, buy vans, fuel and metal objects for shrapnel, and disguise the vans as fuel delivery vehicles. On 26 September the three vans were driven toward the base; at least two met a security roadblock, and in the early hours of 27 September British police recovered the vans and arrested their occupants. Iran denies any involvement; London says the operation was almost certainly directed by the Revolutionary Guard Corps.

A timeline the prosecutors laid out in unusual detail

The indictment reaches back to the spring of 2026, when prosecutors say the three men helped plan and promote about 18 attacks in Europe, carried out in the name of a purportedly new group, Harakat Ashab al-Yamin al-Islamiya, which the Justice Department describes as a front for Kata'ib Hizballah and other designated groups. Seven of those attacks took place in the United Kingdom, more than in any other European country, and they involved arson, explosives and the near-fatal stabbing of two Jewish men in London in April, one of them a dual American-British citizen. Synagogues, Israeli businesses and Jewish schools were among the targets

The prosecutors' account is strikingly visual. On or about 6 April, they say, Mohajeri and al-Hassani sat in a room in Iraq with a map of London on a screen, and al-Hassani told Mohajeri, “we need to get focused on London.” A week later the front group claimed six attacks in and around London, and on 17 and 18 April the men allegedly directed two attacks in real time over video calls, one of them on a London synagogue, telling the attacker to “light it up like a Christmas tree.” Al-Saadi was arrested abroad on or about 1 May and transferred to the United States. In August the Fairford preparations began: on 22 August al-Hassani paid a person identified only as Individual-1 to survey the base's perimeter, and the coded calls from jail ran alongside it all, with al-Saadi telling his family on 24 September to “give him money so we can do it.” Three days later the vans moved on Fairford.

The gaps the indictment leaves open

An indictment is an allegation, not a verdict. The first open question is the simplest: where are Mohajeri and al-Hassani? Prosecutors say both men were in Iran at the time of the Fairford plot, and they did not disclose the whereabouts of either when the charges were announced. Only al-Saadi is in American custody, which means the case against the other two may never reach a court in the United States. The second gap concerns the men in the vans: British police detained five men after midnight on 27 September, and seven men were arrested in total during the British investigation, all later released on bail. Two of them, Mohmed Ahmad Abdulkarim and Nouman Essghir, both 24 and residents of London, were subsequently charged under Britain's National Security Act.

The third gap is about what the plot would have become. The indictment says the vans contained barrels of fuel and that metal objects were bought to serve as shrapnel, but British authorities have not published a full inventory of what was recovered, and the vans never reached the base. Nor is it public how much of the coded telephone traffic investigators have decoded. And the central question, whether Tehran directed the operation, rests on the prosecutors' account of the network's links to the Revolutionary Guard Corps, an account Iran rejects outright.

Why a foiled plot at a bomber base redraws the map

RAF Fairford is not an ordinary airfield. It is the British base from which American bombers have operated for decades, and it was used to deploy bombers in the war against Iran, which makes it a target with a logic of its own. The United States withdrew all of its B-1 bombers from the base days after the September incident, and on Tuesday flight-tracking data showed at least a dozen aircraft being removed from a second British base, RAF Mildenhall, after what the Wall Street Journal described as a threat from Iran. The evacuation of the second base shows how quickly a single alleged plot can move heavy metal across the Atlantic alliance.

The second reason this case matters is the jailhouse detail: a man in federal custody in New York, awaiting trial on terrorism charges, is alleged to have kept coordinating attacks through family telephone calls, using coded language about money and “work.” The third is the pattern of targets: the spring attacks were aimed at Jewish communities in Europe and the United States, and Attorney General Todd Blanche said anyone who plans such a plot “will be prosecuted by the United States government.”

What the indictment is really alleging

Strip away the courtroom language and the indictment describes a network with three distinct jobs. Al-Saadi, prosecutors say, was the coordinator, a longtime operative of the Revolutionary Guard Corps and Kata'ib Hizballah who kept working after his arrest. Mohajeri, an Iranian national and Guard operative, was the link to Tehran. Al-Hassani, an Iraqi with contacts and criminal associates in Britain, was the logistics man, the one who paid for surveillance, bought the vans and the fuel, and told drivers where to go. The front group, Harakat Ashab al-Yamin al-Islamiya, is described as a mask for Kata'ib Hizballah, and the April attacks were directed and filmed in real time.

The evidence itself is the third thing to notice: payments, surveillance videos, a map of London on a screen, FaceTime calls projected onto a wall, and family telephone calls from a New York jail in which “work” meant terrorism. None of it has been tested in court, and an indictment is merely an allegation: every defendant is presumed innocent until proven guilty. The attribution to Tehran is the part that will be argued hardest, because it turns a criminal prosecution into a matter of state responsibility, and it is the part Iran denies.

The ripples beyond the courtroom

The first ripple is force protection: bombers are the most visible American presence in Britain, and the withdrawal of the B-1s from Fairford and the evacuation of aircraft from Mildenhall are its visible costs. The Mildenhall evacuation suggests the alliance is working out, base by base, where heavy bombers can be stationed in Europe at all. The second ripple runs through Britain's domestic law: the two men charged under the National Security Act will appear at the Old Bailey on 20 November, testing a statute written for this kind of allegation.

The third ripple is the safety of Jewish communities in Europe and the United States, the targets of the spring campaign. Regionally, as the Gulf states build a joint command and France names Iranian cyber units behind attacks on its own soil, the Fairford case becomes one entry in a ledger of a war fought in courtrooms and on runways as much as on battlefields. The Shahid Kaveh case shows the same pattern reaching into cyberspace.

The dates that will decide what happens next

Three dates now frame the case: the proceedings in New York, where al-Saadi will face the superseding counts alongside the May charges; 20 November, when Abdulkarim and Essghir are due at the Old Bailey; and the unwritten day, if it ever comes, when Mohajeri and al-Hassani are in custody. The practical questions are whether the United States will seek the two men who were in Iran at the time of the plot, whether the British investigation will publish more about the vans, and whether the courts will accept the prosecutors' account of the coded calls and the links to Tehran.