TEHRAN — Twelve American B-1 strategic bombers left RAF Fairford over the weekend in a hasty pullout that exposes the growing vulnerability of Western bases supporting Washington’s aggressive military operations against Iran.
The withdrawal was executed with unusual speed. According to the New York Times, the Pentagon’s European Command said Sunday that the entire fleet was redeployed to home stations in the United States, including Ellsworth Air Force Base in South Dakota.
Air Force commanders ordered the departure so urgently that several heavy bombers took off while aerial refueling tankers were still scrambling to support the long flight across the Atlantic.
American and British officials have cited “heightened threat assessments” for the sudden exit. The alert came one week after police stopped five men traveling in white vans near the Gloucestershire base, triggering local evacuations and bomb disposal searches.
Authorities recovered petrol but found no explosives, and all five suspects were released on bail. A dual British-Iranian national arrested days later was similarly freed on bail without formal charges.
Despite the total lack of concrete evidence, political leaders in London, Washington, and Tel Aviv rushed to assign blame to Tehran.
British Prime Minister Andy Burnham cited vague indications of Iranian involvement, while U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio claimed the incident involved a foreign actor. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu added that his intelligence agencies warned London of a non-specific plot.
The Iranian Embassy in London firmly rejected those allegations, condemning them as unfounded speculation designed to feed anti-Iran propaganda in the United Kingdom.
Iranian officials have emphasized that Western governments routinely manufacture foreign threats to divert public attention from the mounting illegality and strategic failures of the U.S.-Israeli war on Iran.
RAF Fairford has served as a primary staging ground for American air strikes since March, hosting up to two dozen heavy bombers that loaded precision weapons for attacks on Iranian territory.
Flight tracking data recorded at least 29 bomber deployments through the airbase during the military campaign of aggression.
In July, the Islamic Revolution Guard Corps warned that host facilities enabling foreign aggression would be treated as legitimate defensive targets.
The abrupt emptying of RAF Fairford demonstrates that projecting military power thousands of miles from home is becoming increasingly precarious.
While Washington claimed its bombers can strike targets globally from domestic bases, the rapid retreat from British soil shows that keeping high-value assets stationed near active conflict zones carries severe risks that the Pentagon can no longer manage.
Disclaimer : This story is auto aggregated by a computer programme and has not been created or edited by DOWNTHENEWS. Publisher: tehrantimes.com
