Some things never change. In 1973, when Israel was facing a war of annihilation waged upon it by all of its neighbors, the U.S. was supplying weapons to its beleaguered ally. But there was a hitch. No European country would allow American planes to even stop and refuel on European soil. When Israel won the 1973 war, it did so in spite of the European powers.

Throughout the current century, European nations have been united in their calls to stop the revolutionary government in Iran from acquiring nuclear weapons. They have convened conferences, colloquiums, negotiations, and even issued some strongly worded statements. But they have never done anything practical to prevent the ayatollahs from going nuclear. This year, when American bombers joined the Israeli Air Force in pounding the Iranian nuclear program into the dust, they asked the UK, among other allies, whether they could use Royal Air Force (RAF) bases there to refuel. The Labour government of Keir Starmer bravely denied the U.S. request.

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Eventually, and on the quiet, the UK did allow some American bombers to make pit stops on the way to destroy the Iranian nuclear program. But last week, those bombers took off for a final mission. Not toward Iran—but away from the UK.

This followed an incident that is still shrouded in fog.

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At the end of September, a local woman who lived near the air base RAF Fairford alerted the authorities to suspicious behavior by a number of people in the vicinity. When the police finally arrived, they arrested five men in their 20s. Another man was arrested a few days later, and yet another was nabbed this week. President Donald Trump announced that a major terrorist attack had been foiled and that the U.S. and its ally had been following the terror cell for some time. UK authorities were quieter. They were quieter still within 24 hours of the arrests, when the suspects were all released on bail. The UK government seemed unwilling to say why a group of black-clad men—apparently foreign nationals—should have been heading toward a base housing American aircraft. The court media in the UK insisted—as they always do when an uncomfortable issue is at stake—that any speculation on the issue risked prejudicing any forthcoming trial.

And so there seems to be a glitch in the narrative. In the days since the Fairford incident, Trump and others have said that an Iranian cell appeared to be targeting U.S. military infrastructure in the UK. Meanwhile, the UK government initially tried to pretend that nothing happened before eventually suggesting that Iran may be involved. But this week, the Americans made their attitude clear in the plainest possible way: The U.S. aircraft left RAF Fairford.

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