The head of the United Kingdom’s Counter Terrorism Policing said on Monday that the five men arrested on suspicion of plotting a terrorist attack on a Royal Air Force base in Gloucestershire have been released on bail.
Speaking to reporters, Laurence Taylor said that the police were keeping an “open mind” in the investigation of the potential bomb plot, which he said has prompted speculation about “whether the current geopolitical context has a bearing on this incident.”
“We are considering this from every possible angle, including that this may be actively committed by proxies or individuals either knowingly or unknowingly working on behalf of a foreign state,” Taylor said.
British police declared a “major incident” on Sunday when it arrested the five men near RAF Fairford on suspicion of explosives and terrorism offenses.
“Following extensive interviews and inquiries, the five men who were arrested are being released on police bail this afternoon,” Taylor said. “To be very clear, this does not mean that the investigation is over.”
Taylor, who did not take questions, said that the five are “subject to stringent conditions on their movement and contact with others.”
Information about the suspected plot has pointed in conflicting directions about the seriousness of the threat.
The Press Association reported on Monday, citing anonymous sources, that the police had determined that the men were not in possession of “viable explosives,” but U.K. Prime Minister Andy Burnham said earlier in the day that he had called for an emergency meeting of the cabinet’s national emergency response team.
Edmund Fitton-Brown, a senior fellow at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies and former British ambassador to Yemen, told JNS that the statements and the lack of clarity about the nature of the plot highlight the diversity of actors who might want to target an RAF base that also houses a large U.S. military contingent.
“At the moment, the story doesn’t entirely add up to me,” Fitton-Brown said. “There is a possibility that it will turn out that this was not a serious plot.”
At the same time, groups ranging from anti-Israel activists to terrorists backed by Iran might have reason to try to attack the base.
“My first thought was Palestine Action,” he said, referring to an anti-Israel group that was proscribed in the United Kingdom as a terrorist organization after breaking into RAF Brize Norton in 2025.
“I also thought about Iran because of the nature of the target, the air force base in question—of course, it’s not impossible that those two could even be true at the same time,” he said.
“If the explosives were not viable, then that tells you something about it not having been a lethal threat to the base or to the people on the base or to people around,” Fitton-Brown said. “But that doesn’t alter the fact that it caused major disruption and a sense of great insecurity and fear amongst people in the region.”
The plot was uncovered when a local farmer alerted police that she had seen three vans parked near the base with “a large group of hooded and masked” men nearby, she told the BBC.
American units based at Fairford include the U.S. Air Force’s 501st Combat Support Wing and the United States has used the base for operations against Iran after the United Kingdom permitted its use for “defensive” strikes.
The Iranian embassy in London denied any involvement in the suspected plot on Monday.
“The embassy of the Islamic Republic of Iran in London categorically rejects and strongly condemns the recent unfounded and malicious speculations published by some British individuals and media outlets attempting to link Iran to the arrest of five suspects in the vicinity of RAF Fairford base,” the embassy stated.
It blamed the United States and Israel for attempting to “fuel Iranophobia” regarding the suspected plot.
U.S. President Donald Trump told reporters on Sunday that the United States was working with the United Kingdom, which had done “an amazing job.”
“We had them under investigation,” Trump said of the suspects. “They were looking to do big damage to our fort.”
Speaking to the press in the Oval Office on Monday, Trump said that he disagreed with the decision to release the men on bail.
“I’m surprised that they released them,” Trump said. “I wouldn’t have done that.”
In a previous update, Counter Terrorism Policing said that the five men were between the ages of 23 and 25 and were all residents of London and U.K. citizens. It did not release their names.
Fitton-Brown said that that decision might reflect the political sensitivities in the United Kingdom around terrorism.
“This is a source of considerable frustration to many people in Britain that they feel that the government goes in for an element of babying rather than treating the population as being capable of hearing news, which includes names that might point to provenance,” he told JNS.
“They feel that that is often withheld in order to preserve community relations,and there is a suspicion that that happens more often where it is Middle Eastern-related,” he said.
Although information about the plot remains limited, it comes amid questions about the U.K.’s general response to terrorism and related questions like immigration policy.
On Saturday, The Times reported that Britain had given citizenship to a bodyguard of Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh. The bodyguard, who has been granted anonymity by a court, then allegedly began plotting attacks against Jews in Europe and now faces extradition to Germany.
While that case might suggest an overly lax attitude towards terrorism, the decision to proscribe Palestine Action as a terrorist group has provoked outrage on the U.K.’s anti-Israel left, and is a difficult political issue for the governing Labour Party as the Green Party seeks to siphon off anti-Israel votes.
“The threat environment in the UK is getting worse. It’s getting more dangerous,” Fitton-Brown told JNS. “That’s partly because of the political choices that governments have made over what attitude to take towards the kind of provocative demonstrations and political activism that we’ve seen since the Oct. 7 attacks by Hamas on Israel.”
