President Donald Trump stood in the Oval Office on Monday afternoon and objected to a decision another country's police had made a few hours earlier. "I'm surprised that they released them," he said of the five men arrested beside RAF Fairford. "I wouldn't have done that." Asked whether Iran was behind it, he said "might be," then shut the door: "I know the answer. I can be very specific, but I'd rather not say it."
The story he was defending began the day before, in Chicago. Trump told a crowd there that the arrests were a joint operation, that the men "were looking to do big damage," and that American and British agencies "had them under view for a long time, and we got them."
Britain tells it differently. Before dawn on Sunday, a farmer in Whelford, the village at the edge of the base, drove home from a party and found three vans blocking her road. She tried the phone number painted on the side, got no answer, and dialled 999. Whitehall officials told the BBC the operation was not intelligence-led. Police arrested five men on suspicion of explosives offences, rearrested them on suspicion of preparing an act of terrorism, and evacuated about 85 homes around the runway. Home Secretary Shabana Mahmood told the Labour conference the men are British nationals aged 23 to 25 who live in London.
By Monday afternoon the five were going home. Laurence Taylor, the assistant commissioner who runs Counter Terrorism Policing, stood outside New Scotland Yard and put them on police bail. British police can hold terror suspects for 14 days. Taylor let these men go inside two. "This does not mean that the investigation is over," he said; they remain under "stringent conditions on their movement and contact with others," and his detectives are keeping "an open mind." He said they are looking at every angle, including that the plot "may be actively committed by proxies or individuals either knowingly or unknowingly working on behalf of a foreign state." He named no state. He added that plots of this kind often involve people chasing "quick financial gain."
Iran's embassy in London "categorically rejects and strongly condemns" what it called "unfounded and malicious speculations" linking Tehran to the arrests. In July, Iran's Revolutionary Guard named Fairford a legitimate target; American B-1 bombers have flown from that runway against Iran since March. BBC Verify found no company trading under "Fuel 2You," the name painted in red on one of the vans.
Narativ asked on Monday morning's front page whether the plot was staged. Nobody has answered it. Taylor's officers have named no motive, no sponsor and no explosives, and nobody has produced evidence of a false flag. Whether five young men were paid to drive fuel to a fence and were left holding a terror charge, or whether something worse was underway, is the detectives' question to settle. Trump described a long surveillance operation. London says there wasn't one. Trump says he knows the answer and won't give it. Either the president holds intelligence that Scotland Yard does not, or he is describing an operation that never happened. He should say which.
Later in the same appearance, a reporter asked whether motorists should expect high gas and diesel prices to last through the November 3 midterms. Trump gave no number. He told the room that if they wanted to see turmoil, they should picture a city destroyed by a nuclear weapon, "not only Israel and big parts of the Middle East, but let them hit us." Minutes earlier he had promised that once the war ends, "inflation is going to be eradicated totally." The war began on February 28, when the United States and Israel struck Iran and killed Ali Khamenei. Seven months on, AAA puts a gallon of regular at $4.48, up from $3.13 a year ago. Trump has set no date for the war to end.
Five weeks to the midterms, the president has a war with no end date, a gas price he will not say aloud, and a British terror case he knows more about than the British do. He says.
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