The United States has charged three men it says are Iran-backed operatives with terrorism offences over nearly 20 attacks and attempted attacks across Europe and the United States, including a foiled plot targeting RAF Fairford, a British air base used by US forces, the US Department of Justice said on Tuesday.
An eight-count superseding indictment unsealed by a grand jury in New York 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. Prosecutors say the three supported Kata’ib Hezbollah and Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC), both designated by the US as foreign terrorist organisations.
According to the indictment, al-Saadi directed the RAF Fairford plot from his cell at the Metropolitan Detention Center in Brooklyn, New York, using coded messages in phone calls to family members in Iraq. Al-Saadi, 32, was arrested in Turkey in May and extradited to the United States on earlier terrorism charges, and has pleaded not guilty to those charges.
In September, British police were alerted to three suspicious vans driving towards RAF Fairford in Gloucestershire, where US B-1 bombers were stationed. Two of the vans were stopped at a roadblock and a third was seized the next day. Prosecutors allege the vans, filled with fuel, were intended to be used as vehicle-borne improvised explosive devices. Seven men were arrested and later released on stringent conditions after no explosives were found; several were rearrested in late October. Two men have been charged in the UK over the alleged plot.
The indictment also links the three men to a series of other alleged attacks in Europe and the US, including arson attacks on Jewish institutions in London. Al-Saadi is also accused of trying in April to hire someone to carry out assassination plots in the United States, including against a synagogue in Manhattan. The person he contacted was an undercover agent. Prosecutors also allege al-Saadi previously worked closely with Qasem Soleimani, the former Quds Force commander killed in a US airstrike in 2020.
Source: CNN (https://www.cnn.com/2026/11/10/politics/fairford-terror-plot-arrest)
