It was the early hours of 27 September when a farmer, heading home from a party, spotted something odd near RAF Fairford. Three vans. Parked in a place they had no business being.
He called the police.
What investigators found — and what the US Department of Justice now alleges — was not a random disturbance but the final stage of a plot that had been assembled over weeks, stitched together across borders, and directed, according to prosecutors, from as far away as Iran and a prison cell in New York.
The Indictment
On Tuesday, the DOJ unsealed an eight-count indictment against three men: Mohsen Mohajeri, an Iranian; Mohammad Ali al-Hassani, an Iraqi national; and Mohammad Baqer Saad Dawood al-Saadi, a dual Iranian-Iraqi citizen.
The charges allege a string of plots in the US and Europe, including what the DOJ describes as a terrorist plot at the UK airbase near Fairford in Gloucestershire.
One of the accused, a dual Iranian-Iraqi national, is alleged to have communicated with contacts in the UK from a New York prison where he is awaiting trial on separate charges. The other two are accused of doing the same from Iran.
Iran has strongly denied involvement.
The Group With a Borrowed Name
Prosecutors say the attacks were carried out under the banner of a purportedly new group calling itself Harakat Ashab al-Yamin al-Islamiya — The Islamic Movement of the People of the Right Hand, or HAYI.
According to the DOJ, HAYI claimed responsibility for 18 terrorist attacks across Europe in the spring of 2026, seven of them in the UK. The attacks, the department said, involved arson, explosives and, in one case, the near-fatal stabbing of two Jewish men in London, one of them a dual US-British citizen.
Two Jewish men were stabbed in Golders Green, north London, in April. A suspect is due to stand trial next year.
The Logistics of a Plot
The indictment lays out, in granular detail, how the Fairford operation was allegedly assembled.
In August, al-Hassani is accused of directing and paying associates in the UK to conduct preparatory steps and arrange logistics. On 22 August, he allegedly paid one person to carry out pre-operational surveillance of RAF Fairford’s perimeter.
The following month, he allegedly paid several people to help him prepare — procuring vans and barrels of fuel, researching the purchase of chemical accelerants including large quantities of potassium chloride, and buying metallic objects that could serve as explosive shrapnel.
The vans, the DOJ says, were dressed up to look like they belonged to a fuel delivery business and a swimming pool supply company.
On 26 September, al-Hassani allegedly tasked individuals to drive three vans — some later found to contain barrels of fuel — toward the base. He was, prosecutors say, in frequent communication with the drivers, directing them where to go.
At least two of the vans encountered a security roadblock and were not allowed to proceed. No explosive materials were found in the vehicles, but a quantity of petrol was seized.
By the time the farmer spotted them in the early hours of 27 September, the plot had already failed.
The Wider Allegation
FBI Director Kash Patel framed the indictment as evidence of intent. “This eight-count indictment shows the determination of Iran to commit terrorist attacks in Europe and the US,” he said.
He added that one of the three allegedly sent coded messages from detention to assist in future acts of violence.
According to Patel, the accused were involved in nearly 20 attempted attacks in support of Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps and the Iran-backed Iraqi militia Kataib Hezbollah.
Denial and Diplomatic Fallout
The Iranian embassy in London said it “categorically rejects and strongly condemns” what it called “unfounded and malicious speculations” linking Iran to the incident.
Two British nationals appeared in court last month in connection with the alleged plot. Seven men have been arrested in the UK.
The US withdrew all its bombers from RAF Fairford after the incident, with President Donald Trump citing “some threats” to the base. The airfield has been used by the US Air Force for decades and, in recent months, was used to fly B-1 and B-52 bombers to the Middle East for what Washington called defensive strikes on Iran.
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In July, Iran warned that “any base used for aggression against Iranian territory constitutes a legitimate target for our forces.”
What Comes Next
However, the case now moves into the slow machinery of US courts, where three men will contest charges that stretch from a Cotswolds airbase to a prison in New York.
For the UK, the question is what the Fairford incident reveals about the reach of networks operating on British soil. For the US, it is whether the indictment disrupts a campaign or merely documents one.
And for the farmer who called the police that night, the answer is simpler: he saw three vans where they did not belong, and made a call that may have prevented something far worse.