UK Prime Minister Andy Burnham stood up in the House of Commons on Monday and claimed that a suspected plot targeting the RAF Fairford air base in Britain was “highly likely” to have been coordinated in Iran, and almost certainly directed by the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, though he presented no evidence to support those claims. The seven suspects arrested as part of the investigation are all out on police bail and still have not been charged.
“We will not tolerate these threats on our soil,” Burnham said, reported Reuters. “We will crack down on Iran’s use of criminal networks, using our full range of powers to target them and their funding streams, and we will bring further sanctions to restrict the capacity of Iran and the IRGC to do us harm.”
British Foreign Minister Ed Miliband said he had summoned the Iranian ambassador while the Ministry announced that two Iranian nationals had been sanctioned.
Thirty governments, all Western oriented and led by the U.S., issued a joint statement backing up Burnham’s claims and condemning “in the strongest terms Iran’s use of violent attacks, including the acts of lethal plotting, arson, sabotage, cyber-attacks, and other hybrid activities against us and our partners.”
“We recognize the United Kingdom’s attribution of Iran’s involvement in the incident at RAF Fairford on 27 September,” it said. “The UK has also concluded [that] this event demonstrates the IRGC’s continued willingness to project hostile activity beyond its borders through covert networks and proxy actors.”
“Any attempt by Iran to threaten, silence, intimidate, harass, harm, or coerce people on our territories through proxies or any other means is unacceptable,” it said further—but it’s apparently acceptable if some of those same governments do the same things to their own citizens who disagree with their permanent war policies. “Anyone who conducts hostile activities on behalf of Iran, or any other state, should know that we will take action to identify, investigate, disrupt, and prosecute these acts.”
The Iranian Foreign Ministry issued a statement rejecting Burnham’s claims as a fabrication. It said the UK government cannot evade political and legal responsibility for its claims and their possible consequences by hiding behind vague wording without providing solid evidence, reported IRNA. The Ministry noted that the accusation was an “ugly conspiracy” aimed at advancing an anti-Iran campaign and evading accountability for Britain’s role in the U.S.-Israeli military aggression against the Iranian people.
The statement said the use of phrases such as “highly likely” and “almost certainly” to suggest the credibility of attributing the alleged incident to Iran is a clear attempt to dodge accountability for baseless accusations.
