RAF Fairford: Netanyahu claims Israel warned UK of ‘Iranian attack’
Benjamin Netanyahu has claimed Israel gave Britain intelligence about the incident last Sunday near the RAF Fairford military base, without providing any evidence.
The Israeli prime minister also suggested the British government has given in to an "Islamist-Marxist alliance", less than a day after an Israeli minister labelled British Home Secretary Shabana Mahmood an "Islamist".
In an interview with Fox News, Netanyahu said: "You talked about the thing in Britain. Do you want to hear how absurd things are there? And how far the anti-Israeli propaganda has gone?"
He added: "We gave the Brits the intel, that there was going to be an attack, and it's an Iranian-sponsored attack, and pretty much the next day they slap sanctions on us.
"It’s wild, the caving in, the collapse before the Islamist-Marxist alliance is very dangerous for the future of the West."
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MEE has contacted the British Foreign Office for comment.
UK Prime Minister Andy Burnham said on Wednesday that there were "strong indications" Iran played a role in events near RAF Fairford, an American base in Gloucestershire, when five men were arrested last Sunday on suspicion of terrorist offences.
"There are strong indications that Iran played a part in what happened over the weekend at RAF Fairford," Burnham said, "but of course it remains an ongoing, complex, and serious police investigation."
On Monday the police released on bail five men arrested in relation to the incident, all British nationals in their twenties.
It was also revealed on Monday afternoon that there were no viable explosives in the three white vans found east of the base and examined by the police.
Whitehall officials said the incident was not an “intelligence-led operation”. Such operations involve Counter Terrorism Policing and MI5 tracking suspects and arresting them before they commit a crime.
But US President Donald Trump said after the arrests that “we have had these men under view for a long time”.
After they were released on bail, Trump doubled down on this, expressing surprise the men were released.
“We know everything about them, we would not have released them,” he said, repeating that the UK had worked “very closely” with the US on the issue.
US Secretary of State Marco Rubio also said: “What happened, what almost happened, what could have happened in the UK over the weekend is a very serious situation. It's one that clearly involves the hands of a foreign actor.”
Netanyahu's latest comments come after Amichai Chikli, Israel’s minister for diaspora affairs, launched an attack on X on UK Home Secretary Shabana Mahmood on Wednesday.
Chikli declared: "When people speak of the political takeover of a country by Islamism, they imagine bearded sheikhs in robes.
"In reality, political Islam often looks exactly like this: Oxford English, fashionable clothes and progressive rhetoric. That is true of the Islamist Mayor Mamdani, and it is equally true of the Islamist Shabana Mahmood.
"I sincerely hope, for the sake of the British people, that the lunatics BDS activists who have taken over their country do not drag Britain into an abyss from which there is no way back."
The British government has not responded to Chikli's remarks.
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