Empires Trade Blows, Targets Get Marked, Bombers Run

Three men, one of them already jailed in the United States and held without bail, were accused Tuesday of being Iran-supported operatives who plotted nearly 20 attacks on Jewish communities in Europe and the U.S., plus an assault on a British airbase that hosts American bombers. A superseding indictment unsealed in Manhattan federal court names Mohammad Baqer Saad Dawood al-Saadi, a dual Iranian-Iraqi national; Mohsen Mohajeri, an Iranian national; and Mohammad Ali al-Hassani, an Iraqi national. Only al-Saadi is in custody.

It's the kind of story that looks different depending on where you stand. Stand inside a federal prosecutor's office and it's a terror network. Stand where the bombs land and it's a war with a return address.

Who Has the Power

U.S. Attorney Jamie McDonald announced the charges in a news release. She said al-Saadi, arrested in the spring, kept coordinating with his co-defendants in the days leading up to the attempted September plot at RAF Fairford in the United Kingdom, "where U.S. bombers and troops had been stationed." The indictment alleges he used coded language with relatives from jail to direct that money be passed to people who could carry out attacks.

McDonald's framing: "These defendants helped orchestrate a campaign of terror on behalf of terrorist organizations affiliated with Iran that targeted Jewish communities in Europe and the United States, and the British military base, RAF Fairford, housing American service members. The threat presented by Iran and Iran-backed terrorist groups to America and our allies is not hypothetical — it is very real."

Attorney General Todd Blanche added: "Anyone who plans a terrorist plot on a military base housing American servicemembers will be prosecuted by the United States government." Note who gets named as the victim in that sentence: the base, the servicemembers, the government's prosecutorial reach.

What They're Calling "Order"

Prosecutors say the three conspired to use a network of contacts in the United Kingdom to commit attacks on behalf of an Iran-aligned network, including the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps and Kata'ib Hizballah, both designated by the U.S. as foreign terrorist organizations. Prosecutors say al-Saadi was a Kata'ib Hizballah commander. In June, about five months ago, he pleaded not guilty to charges that he plotted at least 18 attacks in Europe in retaliation for the U.S. and Israel's war with Iran.

Read that last clause again. The retaliation, as described in the base article, was for a war between states. Jewish communities in Europe and the U.S., ordinary people with no hand on any lever of that war, were allegedly marked as targets anyway. That's what state-versus-state conflict does: it manufactures targets out of civilians on every side, whoever pulls the trigger.

Al-Saadi called himself a "prisoner of war" and has been held without bail. His lawyers didn't immediately respond to requests for comment.

Who Pays

The base article is silent on any victims of an actual attack, because the Fairford operation was stopped. What it does record is the shape of the response. Five men were detained after midnight on Sept. 27 on suspected explosives and terrorism offenses after three suspicious vans were spotted traveling toward the base in western England. A sixth suspect, a British-Iranian dual national, was arrested several days later. All were released on bail. British police have since rearrested two men on suspicion of assisting Iran over the suspected plot.

British authorities linked the incident to Tehran. Iran denied involvement. Then came the quiet part: the arrests prompted the U.S. to withdraw its bombers stationed at the base, redeploying them to home bases in the United States. RAF Fairford, 100 miles west of London, has been used by American bombers during decades of Middle East conflicts. Decades. The hardware comes and goes at the pleasure of two governments, while the people living near it, and the communities named as targets, have no vote on any of it.

The Trap

The indictment "sheds light on an episode shrouded in mystery for more than a month," per the source. Notice what the public got during that month: nothing, until prosecutors decided the moment suited them. The charges arrive as press releases and quotes from officials who run the wars the defendants say they're retaliating against. Courts will now sort out guilt. Meanwhile the cycle that produces the vans, the bombers, and the target lists keeps turning, and none of the statements from Manhattan propose to end it.