By
October 7, 2026
London antiwar demonstration, March 2026.
British police arrested five men on Sept. 27 on suspicion of explosives and terrorism offences. The arrests took place near a British air base, RAF Fairford, that houses U.S. bombers. These bombers have been used to strike targets in Iran. According to reports from British authorities, the arrests occurred after a tipoff that three vans had been seen heading to the military airfield.
Most of the British media and many of Britain’s leading imperialist politicians and their U.S. counterparts (including #47) immediately called this a “terrorist” plan and investigations began attempting to link the five men, all British citizens, all in their 20s, to the Iranian government.
As many commentators have pointed out, there were no explosives in the vans, just some empty vats. And the five men were freed pending the investigation, something unusual for anyone the British police and secret service really consider terrorists. Strange, since merely demonstrating solidarity with Palestine has been enough to send activists in Britain to prison for a year, awaiting trial.
It appeared that the charge of “terrorism” was just another Big Lie the ruling politicians in both Britain and the U.S. were trying to use to justify aggression against Iran.
Now that lying propagandists of these two imperialist powers have put this probably meaningless event at the front of the news, another question begs an answer: Who are the real terrorists?
Let’s start with a definition of terrorism. A Google search response summarized many U.S.-based definitions from legal bodies this way: “A terrorist act is a violent, unlawful criminal action intended to intimidate a population, coerce a government or influence policy through fear, destruction or harm.”
The U.S. Air Force, which uses the British base, has been bombing targets in Iran on and off since Feb. 28. U.S. and Israeli planes, rockets and various missiles have hit civilian targets all over Iran. They even killed 160 young pupils and some teachers in a primary school in the city of Minab, on Iran’s Gulf Coast. They bombed factories and bridges. They killed thousands of people, most of them civilians.
Washington’s motives
The U.S. definitely intended to intimidate a population, the population of Iran. They intended to crush the government and change that government. All by sowing fear, destruction and harm. That they failed in these attempts does nothing to mitigate the crime.
Any reasonable observer can easily conclude that units of the U.S. Armed Forces that have acted against Iran, including the units assigned to RAF Fairford, have been carrying out terrorist acts in West Asia.
The vehicles stationed at RAF Fairford are jet bombers. They don’t carry empty vats. They carry a substantial payload of explosive devices that they have already dropped on civilian targets in Iran. By international laws of war, these acts are war crimes. By definition, they are terrorism.
The biggest war criminals (and terrorists) are #47, the U.S. Commander-in-Chief, who sends orders to his toady Pete Hegseth at the Pentagon, who transmits those orders to the top generals and admirals. They are the major criminals. And their British counterparts are complicit.
But anyone carrying out orders to drop the bombs is committing a war crime. Military veterans and other retired U.S. officials currently elected to the U.S. Congress have publicly warned the Pentagon that military personnel have the right and the duty to disobey orders to commit war crimes.
The top U.S. officials have not only committed terrorist war crimes, they have betrayed all military personnel in the chain of command by forcing them to obey orders to carry out these war crimes. The only sure way to escape the charge of being a war criminal is to refuse the order. And the best way to stop the war crime is for military personnel to refuse the orders together.
