Fairford Arrests

Police arrested five men early Sunday after three vans were spotted heading toward RAF Fairford in Gloucestershire, officials said.

The call came in at 12:45 a.m., BBC News reported. About 85 households in the nearby village of Whelford were evacuated to a leisure center overnight. A 400-meter cordon went up while an Army bomb disposal team examined the vehicles. Aerial footage showed a remote-controlled robot approaching them, though police did not confirm how it was used.

RAF Fairford has served as a staging point for U.S. Air Force bombers striking Iran since March, BBC News reported. Iran's Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps said in July that any base used against Iran was a "legitimate target," and that London would be held responsible for assisting American attacks, NPR noted.

A local farmer spotted the vans and a group of masked men on her drive home. She called 999 at 1:36 a.m. "I believe that my 999 call foiled whatever plans they had," she told the BBC, adding that armed officers filled the village within ten minutes.

Five British nationals in their 20s, all from London, were arrested on suspicion of explosives offenses and preparing a terrorist act, the Guardian reported. Police later found no explosive material in the vans.

Counter Terrorism Policing released the men on bail Monday afternoon under strict conditions on their movement and contact with others, BBC News reported. Assistant Commissioner Laurence Taylor said detectives were considering "every possible angle," including whether the men had acted as proxies for a foreign state, knowingly or not. An Iranian link remains a line of inquiry, the Guardian reported, though investigators have not confirmed any connection.

The Iranian embassy in London rejected the suggestion outright. It "categorically rejects and strongly condemns" any claim of Iranian involvement, calling it "unfounded and malicious speculations," the embassy told BBC News.

From the Oval Office, President Trump said the men "were looking to do big damage" and that he would not have released them on bail. "We know everything about them, we would not have released them," Trump said, adding that the U.S. and the U.K. had worked closely together on the case.

Prime Minister Andy Burnham chaired a meeting of the government's Cobra crisis committee Monday. He asked the public not to speculate while officials establish the facts, BBC News reported.

"We are considering this from every possible angle," Taylor said.