The movement of yet more United States Air Force planes from their bases in southern England is a disturbing reminder of just how potent the threat from Iran is to British security.
The movement of fuel tanker and special forces craft from RAF Mildenhall in Suffolk (one to Scotland, but all the others to Germany) was no doubt done out of an abundance of caution. Authoritative reports nonetheless suggest that the Americans felt the risk of an embarrassing and costly loss of expensive US equipment to Iranian espionage was sufficiently real to justify evasive action.
This latest episode follows the “major incident” that was declared in September after suspicious activity was detected near the US base at RAF Fairford in Gloucestershire. A number of men have been arrested in connection with an alleged Iranian-linked plot.
Whatever the truth about these stories, air bases covering vast areas with relatively flimsy perimeter defences are obviously at risk from even amateurish attacks using drones or other low-level technology, causing damage and creating confusion and propaganda far out of proportion to the actual effort involved in planning and executing any operations, often by deniable proxy players.
Iran’s allies, Russia and China, have deployed this kind of “hybrid” low-level warfare throughout Europe for some time. It may be a coincidence that the French secret intelligence service has blamed the Iranians for the sabotage of refrigerators in supermarkets in various European countries, but this, the menacing of the airbases, the arson attack on the Starmer family home and the surveillance of vital undersea communications cables are all part of a pattern, with a trend towards hitting harder military targets.
The axis of Russia, Iran and China is obviously not behaving in a friendly manner, and is increasingly brazen about it. Sir Ken McCallum, the head of MI5, warned only a few weeks ago that the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) is intensifying its attacks in Britain beyond the usual targets of assassinating Iranian dissidents; this also includes the high-profile arson and sabotage attacks on Jewish sites that Sir Ken asserts were carried out by Iranian proxies.
So while Marco Rubio, the American secretary of state, argues that Iran is on the ropes thanks to Western sanctions and the US-Israeli bombing campaigns, it is plainly still capable of inflicting harm on Britain’s doorstep.
Traditionally, after decades of imperial-era interference, the Islamic Republic has viewed Britain as an ingenious enemy quite beyond its contemporary military capabilities, playing “Little Satan” to the Great Satan of America. Neither the IRGC nor the ayatollahs are impressed with the British government’s nuanced stance of supporting and facilitating only “defensive bombing” raids from US bases on British territory on Iranian targets, including from the Chagos Islands in the Indian Ocean.
Even if the Americans extricate themselves from the conflict fairly soon, the hostility to the UK will hardly dissipate, though there might be some short-term respite from Iranians trying to cause mischief, and worse, around military or defence industry establishments. A wind-up of this war feels more likely than not.
The American people’s midterms rebuke to President Trump’s war was as emphatic as any bunker-busting bomb, and there is a sudden consensus in Washington that the kinetic part of the campaign is over. The price of gas is high enough already. Mr Rubio says that there is no need for major combat operations, and the president himself, for the moment, is encouraging peace talks organised by Qatar, and he thinks the war is “essentially over”. So guess who won, Mr Trump?
The grim legacy of President Trump’s disastrous war of choice remains. The Iranians are as hostile as ever and will no doubt maintain their ability to launch guerrilla attacks on Western soil. Tehran will control the flow of oil and much else through the Persian Gulf and the Red Sea. It will intimidate its neighbours, and especially Saudi Arabia. It has been driven into an ever closer strategic partnership with Russia and China, and remains at war with Israel, probably permanently.
The outcome of the war in Iran is that the Trump administration somehow contrived to leave the regime in a stronger position, the Western powers divided, a global economic recession narrowly averted, and peace in the Middle East as remote as it has ever been. The United States Air Force, by far the most advanced and powerful on Earth, has had to scramble its British bases and fly away from Iranian agents. It is a lesson in how not to win a war.
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