Published on
Israel had warned Britain that Iran was planning an attack on an airbase, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said, as he denounced the UK government for still pressuring his administration over treatment of the Palestinians.
Speaking to Fox News late on Wednesday, Netanyahu said Israel tipped off Britain about a plot shortly before Burnham’s government announced sanctions on products from Israeli settlements in the occupied West Bank on 8 September.
“You want to hear how absurd things are there and how far the anti-Israel propaganda has gone?” Netanyahu told the US network’s conservative host Sean Hannity.
“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 slapped sanctions on us,” he said.
Netanyahu has spent decades warning of threats from Iran’s cleric-run state, sometimes meeting scepticism elsewhere.
British Prime Minister Andy Burnham said on Wednesday there were “strong indications” that Iran was involved in suspicious activity near the RAF Fairford airbase, which is used by US forces in their war on Iran.
Iran’s embassy in London earlier said it “categorically rejects and strongly condemns” speculation it was involved in the incident, while Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi posted on X that Burnham was “barking up the wrong tree.”
US President Donald Trump also spoke of a possible Iranian role in the incident, in which a resident reported masked men near vans heading to the Fairford air base.
Since taking office in late July, Burnham has taken a tougher stance on Israel, saying his predecessor did not do enough.
He imposed the sanctions after a spate of violence by Israeli settlers in the West Bank against Palestinians, with nearly daily physical attacks and vandalism.
Foreign Secretary Ed Miliband described the violence, which come as Netanyahu promotes new settlements, as ethnic cleansing.
Growing confusion
The case was plunged into confusion when UK police released on bail five British men it had arrested on Sunday on suspicion of explosives and terrorism offences.
After three days of investigations, including using a bomb disposal team, police said on Tuesday they had found no explosives in the vehicles, but they had retrieved a “quantity of petrol.”
Then on Wednesday, The Times newspaper reported that the incident had been foiled after one of the five suspects tipped off the police himself before the group was apprehended.
US President Donald Trump and his Secretary of State Marco Rubio had previously indicated that intelligence bodies were aware of the suspects and that a foreign state could be involved, but UK officials had not weighed in.
Speculation was rife that Iran or another hostile state could have been involved, after Tehran previously warned London against allowing its military bases to be used by Washington.
Britain didn’t join the US and Israel in the Iran war, which began on 28 February, and initially denied Trump’s request to use bases in the UK to strike the country.
But then-Prime Minister Keir Starmer agreed in March to let the US use bases in Britain for what he called “defensive” operations against Iran’s missiles and their launch sites following Iranian attacks on UK interests and Britain’s allies in the Gulf.
American B-1 and B-52 bombers have taken off from Fairford, 160 kilometres west of London, for operations during the Iran conflict, the only base on Britain’s mainland used for this purpose.
Iran has said that it considers any base used to attack its territory a legitimate target.
Additional sources • AFP