JERUSALEM (AP) — British and U.S. leaders have suggested, without providing evidence, that Iran played a role in two major security incidents this week, the arrests near US military base in England used in war against Tehran and Attack in the cockpit of a plane bound for Israel.
As of Friday, no confirmed links with the Islamic Republic had emerged. Britain has not released any evidence linking Iran to the arrests at the air base on terrorism-related charges. And an official who was not authorized to speak to the media said there was currently no evidence of a link between Iran and the cockpit attack.
The investigations are still in their early stages. If an Iranian link to the British arrests is confirmed, it would highlight a strategy that the Iranian government has promoted for decades, using smaller, relatively inexpensive attacks to attack and disrupt more powerful adversaries and their economies while causing friction among allies. This strategy is currently in evidence in the Strait of Hormuz.
If Iran is confirmed to have played a role in targeting the FlyDubai flight, it would represent a dangerous new level in this approach.
Iran denies any involvement
Iran has denied any involvement in Sunday’s arrests near RAF Fairford air base, used by US bombers to strike Iran. Iranian leaders summoned the British ambassador and called on the British government to provide an official explanation.
Police arrested a 25-year-old British and Iranian citizen on Thursday on suspicion of planning a terrorist attack, while five other suspects were released on bail. Detectives said they found a quantity of accelerant — gasoline — in pickup trucks near the air base, but no explosives.
Prime Minister Andy Burnham said the UK saw “strong indications” that Iran had played a role in the incident, but did not provide details.
During the FlyDubai attack, Iran did not comment on US President Donald Trump’s suggestion that the co-pilot may have ties to Iran. Asked if he had been informed of any links, Trump replied: “I would say the answer, based on what I’m hearing, is yes, but we’re working on it right now.” » He did not give details.
But even Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, one of the world’s most vocal critics of Iran, said it was too early to say.
With governments not sharing key details – such as the identities of suspects or their possible motivations, which are not made public during active police investigations in Britain – speculation risks filling the void.
“When there is this kind of gray area where evidence is lacking, there is a tendency, especially (on the part of) politicians, media, etc., to attribute everything to Iran,” said Antonio Giustozzi, a senior fellow at the Royal United Services Institute, a London-based defense think tank. “And a lot of that is true, but not all of it is necessarily true. »
He added that the Iranians do not deny that they have cells abroad.
Incidents such as the one at RAF Fairford appear to be part of a pattern of attacks aimed at exerting pressure and signaling to U.S. allies that “in this case we didn’t do anything too terrible, but it wouldn’t be difficult to do something terrible,” Giustozzi said.
However, he doubts that Iran is involved in the FlyDubai incident: “In terms of strategy, dragging Israel now brings no benefit to Iran and only complicates the situation. »
Iran welcomes asymmetric warfare
Just last week, Iranian officials openly promoted asymmetric warfare as a central strategy.
“Asymmetric warfare means confronting the enemy’s expensive heavy weapons with lower costs and simpler, but more effective and practical defense equipment, while achieving victory,” said an Iranian military spokesman, Brig. » declared General Abolfazl Shekarchi, in comments reported by the official Iranian news agency IRNA.
Such tactics are based on “self-sacrifice, faith and spirituality,” he said, calling conventional warfare vulnerable to this approach.
Tehran turned to this approach after the 1979 Islamic Revolution cut off military and other support from its previous allies, including the United States. Iran adopted asymmetric measures, including the use of drones, during the Iran-Iraq War in the 1980s and then in the current war which began with the US and Israeli attacks on February 28.
Iranian tactics include a barrage of drone attacks against regional neighbors that host U.S. bases and assaults on ships attempting to transit the Strait of Hormuz. Small attack boats and mines also threaten the strait. Armed proxies of Iran launched attacks in southern Lebanon, Yemen, Gaza and Iraq.
“Tehran understands that it cannot defeat Israel or the United States in a high-intensity conventional war. Instead, the regime appears to be deploying an asymmetrical, attritional response designed not for decisive battlefield victory, but rather for endurance and survival,” the Soufan Center think tank wrote earlier this year.
Iran has denied alleged acts of sabotage
Iran has acknowledged some direct military or paramilitary attacks during the war, including against American warships. But the type of involvement authorities suggest about the FlyDubai and England incidents is more indirect, making it difficult to confirm and easier to deny.
These allegations echo concerns about acts of sabotage in Europe which Russia has been widely accused of supporting since its full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022. Moscow has denied them.
Tehran has faced similar allegations before. In an effort to “mitigate the risk of retaliatory attacks against Iran, Iranian agents have made a habit of hiring criminal proxies to carry out attacks at Tehran’s behest,” Matthew Levitt of the Washington Institute for Near East Policy, which maintains a database of incidents, wrote last year.
In a high-profile case, the US Department of Justice disclosed in November 2024 a Iranian murder-for-hire plot to kill Trump, charging a man who said he was charged by a government official before that month’s election. The Iranian government rejected the report and called it a plot to complicate relations.
More recently, British officials have said Iran-linked proxies were behind a series of arsons and other attacks in Britain and other European countries, many of which targeted the Jewish community or opponents of Iran’s Islamic theocracy. In October 2025, the head of domestic intelligence service MI5 said his agency had spotted more than 20 “potentially lethal” Iranian-backed plots in the past year.
Several suspects, as young as teenagers, have been charged in the United Kingdom for arson attacks targeting synagogues and Jewish ambulances. Officials say the crimes are often carried out for small amounts of money and those arrested have little or no knowledge of ties to Iran. It also echoes alleged Russian-backed attacks in Europe.
In July, Britain banned the Islamic Movement of Companions of the Right, or IMCR, which it says is an Iranian proxy group behind the attacks. The IMCR went live earlier this year and has claimed responsibility for attacks on synagogue in Belgium and the Netherlands.
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Lawless reported from London. Associated Press writer Sam Mednick in Tel Aviv, Israel, contributed.
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