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"start_ts": "2026-10-07T13:41:16.387397+00:00", "status": "succeeded" } ], "pdf": [], "readability": [ { "cmd": [ "/app/node_modules/readability-extractor/readability-extractor", "/tmp/tmpz4kti8wy", "https://www.middleeastmonitor.com/20261007-flying-scared-the-evacuation-of-us-bombers-from-raf-fairford/" ], "cmd_version": "0.0.11", "end_ts": "2026-10-07T13:41:16.372446+00:00", "index_texts": [ "The evacuation of a dozen B-1B bombers of the US Air Force from the RAF Fairford in Gloucestershire is another instalment in the latest rippling of the Iran war that began as a pre-emptive, illegal assault by the US and Israel on the Islamic Republic in late February.\u00a0 This, arguably, came in two parts, the first scripted with the detention and arrest of five men on 27th September in the vicinity of the base on suspicion of committing offences under the Explosives Act and suspicion of preparation of a terrorist act.\u00a0 (Another was arrested on October 1.)\u00a0 All were British nationals based in London and speedily released on police bail.\u00a0 At the time, Assistant Commissioner Laurence Taylor, head of Counter Terrorism Policing (CTP), floated the suggestion that \u201cthis may be activity committed by proxies, or individuals either knowingly or unknowingly, working on behalf of a foreign state.\u201d\u00a0 The dust had barely settled before the finger pointing at Iran began.\u00a0 The men in question, according to the police, remained under investigation, with their release \u201csubject to stringent conditions on their movement and contact with others\u201d.\nOn 4th October, the Pentagon announced that \u201call bombers that were deployed to RAF Fairford have been re-deployed to their home stations in the United States.\u201d\u00a0 The department, wishing to blunt the significance of this hasty decision, added that the US military bomber force of B-1s, B-2s, and B-52s remained \u201cready to deliver precious global strike capabilities \u2013 including through operations that launch and recover from the continental United States.\u201d\u00a0\u00a0\nTwo days later, Counter Terrorism Policing announced that a further arrest had been made of a dual UK-Iranian man regarding \u201cactivity that took place close to RAF Fairford.\u201d\u00a0 The arrest was made \u201con suspicion of terrorist acts under Section 5 of the Terrorism Act 2006.\u201d\u00a0 The Senior National Coordinator for CTP, Vicki Evans, reiterated the line that this remained \u201ca live investigation and our specialist teams continue to pursue multiple lines of enquiry into the circumstances surrounding events near RAF Fairford.\u201d\nWhen asked about whether the movement of the bombers was linked to the 27th September incident, US Secretary of State Marco Rubio proved platitudinous and undetailed.\u00a0 \u201cIt\u2019s not unusual to see movement of assets to different parts of the world based on exercises, redeployments, people changing out and new people coming in, new planes coming in and old planes going out.\u201d\u00a0 This front of airy meaninglessness did not take long to vanish.\u00a0 The US Vice President JD Vance added salt to the otherwise dull mix in stating that the bombers had exited the base out of an \u201cabundance of caution\u201d.\u00a0 It was felt that Iran was doing what it had \u201cdone for 49 years\u2026 which is to engage in acts of terrorism against the US and against a lot of other people.\u201d\u00a0\u00a0\nPresident Donald Trump, tongue ever loosened, also told reporters when asked if the bomber redeployment had arisen from any \u201cspecific threat\u201d did not hesitate: \u201cYeah, I think we can say that.\u00a0 They didn\u2019t fly out by accident.\u201d\u00a0 What followed was the usual combination of adulterated facts and twisted tales.\u00a0 \nThere had been \u201csome threats.\u00a0 And rather than tempting the enemy, we\u2019ll capture the enemy and beat the enemy.\u00a0 But why should we leave them there?\u00a0 So we moved them around a little bit.\u00a0 Not very far.\u201d\u00a0 Never one to accept the premise that the US security establishment might err on occasion, the president reiterated the familiar, if long fossilised line: Washington \u201cactually knows the people that made the threat\u201d.\nThis dramatic decision to move the bombers from a base that hosts the US Air Force\u2019s 501st Combat Support Wing, an important component in the illegal war against Iran, is very much the opposite of what was initially done when a farmer noted the presence of three white vans and a \u201clarge group of hooded and masked men\u201d who then attempted to alert the Ministry of Defence police at the airbase.\u00a0 When no response was forthcoming, she made a 999 call to police at 01:36 BST.\u00a0 Within 10 minutes \u201cthe village was full of armed police.\u201d\u00a0 She ruminated on the effect of the call: \u201cI believe that my 999 call foiled whatever plans they had.\u201d She was also \u201cabsolutely staggered that it was left to me, as a member of the public, to see and report this.\u201d\u00a0 The UK Defence Secretary, Wes Streeting, despite thanking the farmer for her call, suggested she only had \u201ca partial picture\u201d of what was unfolding, while Trump, claimed that the men were placed under surveillance \u201cfor a long time, and we got them.\u201d\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\nREAD:\u00a0Dual UK-Iranian national arrested over suspected RAF Fairford plot released on bail\nThe swift relocation of such costly, vulnerable military hardware in the face of a threat that would, if inflicted, have cost a fraction of any budget, is also a startling reminder of the turns in modern warfare.\u00a0 \nThe Ukrainians demonstrated with formidable efficacy in Operation Spider\u2019s Web how its drones could strike Russian nuclear-capable bombers, allegedly crippling a third of its capacity.\u00a0 Taking place in June last year, it involved the use of 117 modestly priced drones that had been smuggled into Russia via lorries by unwitting drivers.\u00a0 The strikes, taking place across five different time zones with the assistance of the commercial autopilot software ArduPilot and the use of artificial intelligence for targeting purposes, led to an estimated bill amounting to US$7 billion.\u00a0 Some 41 planes were damaged or destroyed.\nOperation Spider\u2019s Web drew swooning praise from the cognoscenti.\u00a0 \nKatja Bego of Chatham House thought it \u201coffered a glimpse into the future of warfare, transformed by access to cheap, widely available technology such as small drones, in which anything, anywhere can become a target.\u201d\u00a0 This, she went on to say, raised \u201curgent questions\u201d about NATO\u2019s own preparations in the face of such an attack.\nBefore mighty odds and expensive machinery, new methods of war are proving resourceful, daring and devastating.\u00a0 One palpable absurdity of the Iran War has been the eye-popping costs accruing from the use of heavy weaponry in offence and anti-ballistic missiles such as the THAAD system in defence.\u00a0 This has drained the US inventory, sending Washington\u2019s allies into fits of concern.\u00a0 On a relatively meagre budget, labouring in the face of superior odds and numbers, Tehran has caused mayhem with its drone and missile strikes across the Gulf region.\u00a0 In the case of RAF Fairford, the Iranians, whatever the speculation, did not even need to launch a single drone for an expensive fleet of bombers to be relocated to the continental US.\u00a0\nDespite no official confirmation that Tehran was actually involved, the commentary circuit has been clogged by assessments of a victory for the Islamic Republic.\u00a0 \u201cI think it is hard to conclude anything other than that this will be seen as a success by Iran,\u201d suggests former UK first national security advisor, Lord Peter Ricketts.\u00a0 \u201cWhether it was the intention or whether it\u2019s the inadvertent outcome, it is certainly the outcome that they have now forced the US into a public bring-back of their forces from one of their allies.\u201d\nFrom the aggressively pro-American terrain of the Australian Strategic Policy Institute, Malcom Davis claimed to have identified the crucial lesson: \u201cthat in an age of drone warfare, it is no longer sufficient to assume that aircraft parked in the open are invulnerable to attack.\u201d\u00a0 \nThe US needed \u201cto invest in hardening bases, including developing new hardened aircraft shelters for forward deployed aircraft.\u201d\u00a0 Another, surely cheaper solution would be to refrain from launching criminally foolish wars in the Middle East, or anywhere else, for that matter.\nThe war against Iran was meant to conclude in a popular insurrection against the theocrats in Tehran and the blooming of various flowers in the Orangerie of democracy.\u00a0 There was no insurrection and certainly no flowering.\u00a0 Instead, the successor regime to those slayed continues to resist with steeliness and wage its battle in the fields of briefings, psychology and economics.\u00a0 So far, it is winning.\nOPINION:\u00a0Perilous surrender: The Pentagon falls for artificial intelligence\nThe views expressed in this article belong to the author and do not necessarily reflect the editorial policy of Middle East Monitor." ], "output": "readability", "pwd": "/data/archive/1791367472.051149", "schema": "ArchiveResult", "start_ts": "2026-10-07T13:41:14.341570+00:00", "status": "succeeded" } ], "screenshot": [], "singlefile": [], "title": [ { "cmd": [ "curl", "--silent", "--location", "--compressed", "--max-time", "120", "--user-agent", "Mozilla/5.0 (Macintosh; Intel Mac OS X 10_15_7) AppleWebKit/537.36 (KHTML, like Gecko) Chrome/118.0.0.0 Safari/537.36 ArchiveBox/0.7.4 (+https://github.com/ArchiveBox/ArchiveBox/) curl/curl 8.14.1 (x86_64-pc-linux-gnu)", 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