US indicts Iranian operative for directing failed RAF Fairford plot from New York jail

Federal prosecutors in New York have unsealed an eight-count indictment accusing Mohammad al-Saadi, a 32-year-old dual Iranian-Iraqi citizen, of directing a failed terror plot against RAF Fairford from a US jail cell. The UK air base hosts US B-1 bombers involved in operations against Iran.

Al-Saadi is associated with Kataib Hezbollah and was already detained at the Metropolitan Detention Center in Brooklyn when prosecutors say he began coordinating the attack. He was extradited to the United States in May on charges linking him to 20 attempted terror attacks across the United States and Europe, including antisemitic fire-bombings in London.

“"What are they doing about all our old work?"”

Court documents state that al-Saadi worked with Mohsen Mohajeri and Mohammad Ali al-Hassani, both described as Iranian operatives and both currently in Iran. The two men have been charged alongside al-Saadi.

Prosecutors allege al-Saadi passed coded messages to his associates through monitored phone and FaceTime calls to his mother and sister in Iraq. In one July 30 call, he asked his sister what they were doing about "all our old work," a phrase he used to describe terrorist activity. On a September 24 call, he instructed his family to give money to al-Hassani so they could "do it."

British police were alerted in September to three suspicious vehicles driving toward RAF Fairford. Seven men were arrested on suspicion of a terrorist plot, but they were later released under strict conditions after no explosives were found in the fuel-filled vans. Several of those men were rearrested in late October after British authorities said there was a high likelihood Iran's Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps was involved.

The indictment was handed up by a grand jury in New York on Tuesday. Each call al-Saadi made from jail was monitored and recorded by the FBI, according to court filings.