The US Department of Justice has unsealed charges against three men it says are tied to an Iran-backed network responsible for a wave of attacks across Europe, including the security scare that forced American bombers out of a Royal Air Force base in England two months ago.
Prosecutors allege that Mohsen Mohajeri, an Iranian national, and two Iraqi nationals, Mohammad Ali al-Hassani and the dual Iranian-Iraqi citizen Mohammad Baqer Saad Dawood al-Saadi, directed operatives from abroad — one of them while already in US custody — as part of a group using the cover name Harakat Ashab al-Yamin al-Islamiya, or HAYI. The Justice Department says HAYI is in fact a front for the Iran-backed Iraqi militia Kataib Hezbollah and operates under the direction of Iran's Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps.
Eighteen attacks claimed in Europe
According to the indictment, HAYI claimed responsibility for 18 attacks across Europe in the spring of 2026, seven of them in the UK, ranging from arsons and small explosive devices to a near-fatal stabbing of two Jewish men, including a dual US-British citizen, in Golders Green, north London, in April. A suspect in that stabbing is due to stand trial next year.
The most recent incident tied to the network, prosecutors say, is the one at RAF Fairford in Gloucestershire. A major security alert was declared there on 27 September after three vans, disguised as belonging to a fuel-delivery business and a swimming-pool supplier, were spotted near the base's perimeter in the early hours of the morning by a local farmer driving home from a party. No explosives were found, though officers seized a quantity of petrol and had earlier intercepted two of the vans at a security roadblock. The United States has used RAF Fairford for decades to launch B-1 and B-52 bomber missions, and it withdrew its aircraft from the base after the incident, with President Trump citing unspecified "threats."
The Justice Department says al-Hassani paid an associate in August to carry out "pre-operational surveillance" of the base's perimeter, then paid others the following month to buy vans, fuel, chemical accelerants including potassium chloride, and metal objects that could serve as shrapnel. He is accused of staying in frequent contact with the drivers on the night of the operation, directing their route until two of the three vans ran into the roadblock.
A case built from a prison cell
What distinguishes the new charges, prosecutors say, is that one of the men, al-Hassani, is accused of helping orchestrate the Fairford plot by communicating with UK contacts from behind bars in New York, where he was already awaiting trial on earlier terrorism charges. FBI Director Kash Patel said in a statement carried by the BBC that the indictment "shows the determination of Iran to commit terrorist attacks in Europe and the US," adding that one of the three "allegedly sent coded messages to assist in future acts of violence" even from detention.
This eight-count indictment shows the determination of Iran to commit terrorist attacks in Europe and the US.
FBI Director Kash Patel
The case builds on an earlier Justice Department indictment unsealed in May, which first linked al-Saadi to roughly 18 planned or attempted HAYI attacks across Europe and the US and accused him of directing some of them by video call in real time. Britain has pursued a parallel track: two London men in their twenties, charged by UK prosecutors in late October under the National Security Act, are accused of being the ones who allegedly drove or arranged the vans themselves. Six other men arrested in the UK investigation remain on bail.
Iran has repeatedly denied any involvement. Its embassy in London said this week that it "categorically rejects and strongly condemns" what it called "unfounded and malicious speculations" linking Tehran to the Fairford incident.
What happens next
Al-Saadi and the other defendants named in the new US indictment face charges including conspiracy to provide material support to a foreign terrorist organization and attempted acts of terrorism transcending national boundaries, exposing them to decades in prison if convicted and tried in the US — though two of the three are currently believed to be in Iran, well outside US jurisdiction, making any extradition unlikely in the near term. In London, the two men charged by British prosecutors are expected to enter pleas in the coming weeks, with a trial unlikely before next year. Counter-terrorism officials on both sides of the Atlantic say they expect further charges as the investigation into HAYI's European network continues.
