{"id":787680,"date":"2026-09-30T18:14:08","date_gmt":"2026-09-30T18:14:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/787680\/"},"modified":"2026-09-30T18:14:08","modified_gmt":"2026-09-30T18:14:08","slug":"uk-believes-iran-involved-in-raf-fairford-incident-burnham-says","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/787680\/","title":{"rendered":"UK believes Iran involved in RAF Fairford incident, Burnham says"},"content":{"rendered":"

The government believes that Iran played a part in the RAF Fairford incident which resulted in five men being arrested and then bailed, Prime Minister Andy Burnham has said.<\/p>\n

“There are strong indications that Iran played a part in what happened over the weekend at RAF Fairford,” he told the BBC. He did not provide further details. Tehran has strongly denied any involvement.<\/p>\n

Burnham’s comments come after it emerged that one of the five men had dialled 999 himself<\/a> before the group were arrested.<\/p>\n

Asked why the suspects had been released on bail – a decision which has been openly questioned by President Donald Trump – the prime minister insisted the men were subject to the “strictest possible bail conditions” and added that UK authorities “have this under the strongest grip and closest control”.<\/p>\n

Speaking at the White House on Monday, Trump said: “I will tell you, I would have said, ‘don’t let them have bail’. I’m surprised that they released them. I wouldn’t have done that.”<\/p>\n

But Burnham said: “I think people need to understand that when it says released – that isn’t as people might think. It’s obviously with the strictest possible bail conditions.<\/p>\n

“The authorities have this under the strongest grip and closest control, and I can assure you of that.”<\/p>\n

Burnham’s comments come after US Secretary of State Marco Rubio said on Monday that the incident at RAF Fairford “clearly involves the hands of a foreign actor”<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The government believes that Iran played a part in the RAF Fairford incident which resulted in five men…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":787681,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[49,50,51,47,52,48],"class_list":["post-787680","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-headlines","tag-headlines","tag-news","tag-top-news","tag-top-stories","tag-topnews","tag-topstories"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/787680","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=787680"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/787680\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/787681"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=787680"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=787680"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=787680"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}