Sunday, a farmer driving home through Whelford, a village in England located next to a major air base, came upon three white vans and what she later described as "hooded and masked men" running into the fields. Naturally, she called the police. Within hours, five men had been arrested on suspicion of explosives offenses, then later on suspicion of preparing a terrorist act, an apparent major crisis averted by perhaps minutes.
Some 85 local households were evacuated while Army bomb-disposal teams examined the vans—all near a runway at RAF Fairford used by American bombers during strikes against Iran. It might just be the incident President Donald Trump has needed after months of frustration with NATO allies. In March, after European allies rebuffed his request for help reopening the Strait of Hormuz, Trump called NATO a "one way street," and cast the mission as a test of the alliance.
Fairford now offers a test closer to NATO’s purpose—defending an ally’s own soil. Mercifully, no one was reported hurt on Sunday, and security forces intervened in time. It’s the best outcome for Whelford and, in cold political terms, a gift to the American president.
Here is a vivid picture of the danger facing an ally that hosts American bombers, without a tragedy attached. If investigators establish an Iranian connection, as is currently suspected, Trump can—and probably will—ask the allied governments that declined to join his strikes on Iran how they will answer a threat on British soil. A harder question is whether any answer short of joining the fight against Iran will satisfy him.
Investigators’ initial view is that material in the vans is consistent with improvised explosive devices, though tests of their viability continue. Police have not disclosed the suspects’ nationality, motive, or target. An anonymous source told that investigators consider an Iran-linked motive the most likely, with Russian sabotage and an Islamist plot also being examined.
Trump was somewhat less guarded in his first comments on the matter, saying the men were "looking to do big damage" and had long been "under view" by British and American authorities. Police have not yet confirmed that, but Iran’s Revolutionary Guards had warned in July that any base used against Iran was a "legitimate target," naming Fairford’s bombers. Iran is known to have sleeper cells across the globe.
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