Three Men Charged as Empires Trade Blows Over a Base

Three men were accused by U.S. authorities Tuesday of being Iran-supported operatives who plotted nearly 20 attacks on Jewish communities in Europe and the U.S., plus a planned assault on a British air base used by the U.S. Air Force. Only one of them, Mohammad Al-Saadi, sits in a cell. The other two, Mohsen Mohajeri and Mohammad Ali Al-Hassani, are named in a superseding indictment unsealed in federal court in New York City. The Justice Department says all three face terrorism-related charges.

Who Has the Power

The indictment lays out a chain of command that runs through two states and several armed organizations. Prosecutors say the three men conspired on behalf of an Iran-aligned network that included Iran's Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps and Kata'ib Hizballah. The U.S. government has designated both as foreign terrorist organizations. Washington decides who counts as a terrorist; the label is a state's to hand out.

U.S. Attorney Jamie McDonald announced the case from New York. "The threat presented by Iran and Iran-backed terrorist groups to America and our allies is not hypothetical — it is very real," he said. Attorney General Todd Blanche went further: "Anyone who plans a terrorist plot on a military base housing American servicemembers will be prosecuted by the United States government." Notice what the promise protects. It's a base, and the bombers and troops stationed there.

The target in question is RAF Fairford in Gloucestershire, described in the source as a key U.S. Air Force operating location in Europe that has supported deployments of American strategic bombers. In early October, the Air Force pulled heavy bombers from the base after British counterterrorism police stopped three suspicious vans headed toward it on Sept. 27. That was about six weeks ago. Five men were detained after midnight on suspicion of explosives and terrorism offenses. Two have since been charged under the United Kingdom's National Security Act.

What They're Calling the War

The indictment says the attacks were retaliation for the U.S. and Israel's war with Iran. In June, about five months ago, Al-Saadi pleaded not guilty to charges that he plotted at least 18 attacks in Europe. Prosecutors say Jewish communities in Europe and the United States were among the targets, which means ordinary people who never voted for any of this war were reportedly in the crosshairs of a fight between governments and the armed groups attached to them.

British Prime Minister Andy Burnham said Iran was involved in the incident at RAF Fairford. Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi rejected the allegation, writing on X that Burnham was "barking up the wrong tree." Two governments trade accusations in public. Meanwhile the details of who did what at the base stayed, in the source's words, "shrouded in mystery for more than a month."

Who Pays

The men who allegedly did the legwork were hired hands. The indictment says Al-Hassani paid associates to surveil the base in August, then paid several people in September to procure vans and barrels of fuel, research chemical accelerants including large quantities of potassium chloride, and buy metallic objects usable as shrapnel. The group even made custom decals to pass the vans off as belonging to a fuel company and a swimming pool supply business. The people paid to drive toward the base were the ones British police stopped.

Al-Saadi allegedly kept directing the plot from inside a U.S. prison. Prosecutors say he made video and phone calls to family members in Iraq, who passed coded messages to Al-Hassani and Mohajeri. In a July call with his sister, he asked, "What are we doing about all our old work?" She replied, "It isn't cancelled," investigators said. A prison that couldn't stop a prisoner from allegedly running operations by phone now sends out press releases about the threat.

None of these allegations has been tested at trial. What the record shows so far is a justice system announcing indictments, two governments exchanging denials and accusations, and a war whose costs land on communities and on the people hired to do its dirty work.