By Noah Rothman
Thursday, October 01, 2026
Anyone who assumed that President Trump and his deputies
were unreliable narrators — and, therefore, dismissed the administration’s
early claims that the attempted terrorist attack on RAF Fairford in the U.K.
was linked to Iran — probably encountered cognitive dissonance when Britain’s
center-left prime minister confirmed Trump’s account. The subsequent arrest of a British-Iranian dual national in connection
with that plot would appear to indicate that those arrested outside the air
base were not just fuel thieves.
With this experience in mind, it would be wise to
consider the possibility that the president may be letting us all in on the
intelligence to which he is privy in relation to the thwarted hijacking of an
Israel-bound airliner this week.
Trump isn’t alone in contending that Iran played a role
in this potentially catastrophic plot:
These are extremely preliminary assessments, and they
should be treated as such. What’s more, they conflict with the initial
statements from Israeli officials who, for now, believe that the Omani
national who stabbed the plane’s captain and attempted to take over the
aircraft was a “lone wolf” who underwent “a process of religious radicalization
in recent years.”
Perhaps Western security services are getting jittery.
The elevated threat from Iran, as the Islamic Republic descends into
blockade-induced penury, seems to have everyone on edge. But perhaps Iran did
have its hand in this attempted hijacking, just as it seems to have had some
level of operational control over the attempted attack in England. If so, Iran
has now been linked to two potentially serious terrorist events — mass casualty
events, had they succeeded — in the space of a week that is not yet over.
The civilized world got lucky in the U.K. and in the
skies over the United Arab Emirates. But luck runs out. If you’re in a position
to take as many shots on goal as Iran has in such a short period, you’ll
eventually get one past the keeper.
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