A federal indictment secured on Tuesday, 10 November, in the Southern District of New York charges three Iran-backed operatives with a terror plot targeting US bombers at Royal Air Force Base Fairford in the UK.

The alleged mastermind, Mohammad Baqer Saad Dawood Al-Saadi, a dual Iranian-Iraqi citizen, is said to have orchestrated the plot from his prison cell in the Metropolitan Detention Center in Brooklyn, where he is in solitary confinement. He is accused of using coded messages in phone calls to his mother and sister in Iraq.

The other two accused

His two co-defendants, Mohsen Mohajeri and Mohammad al-Hassani, are based in Iran. It was unclear on Tuesday afternoon whether they were in custody. All three are believed to be part of an Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps-linked network, associated with the Iraqi militia Kata'ib Hizballah.

Al-Saadi was arrested in Turkey in May 2026 and transferred to the US. He faces terrorism-related charges for his activities with Kata'ib Hizballah and the IRGC, and for almost 20 other terrorist attacks in Europe. He has pleaded not guilty.

The alleged attacks

The trio allegedly organised 18 terrorist attacks in Europe earlier in 2026 after the US and Israel attacked Iran in February, including seven in the UK. Among them were a stabbing attack on two Jewish men in London, one of them a US citizen, and an attempted arson of the Bank of New York Mellon in Amsterdam.

The plot connects to the RAF Fairford security scare of 27 September 2026, when British police arrested seven men at gunpoint in Whelford after explosives were found in a van. The men were released on bail. Al-Hassani allegedly directed and paid associates in the UK in August to conduct video surveillance of the base and arrange logistics.

The Justice Department moved last month to limit Al-Saadi's family phone calls to once a month over the alleged coded language.

This is a distinct development from the reported withdrawal of US aircraft from RAF Mildenhall, covered separately, though both relate to the Iran threat facing US forces in the UK.