STEVE INSKEEP, HOST:
Juliette Kayyem has been listening with us. She's a national security expert and former Homeland Security official. Good morning.
JULIETTE KAYYEM: Good morning.
INSKEEP: OK. So the news since you last talked with us earlier this morning is the British authorities say these five who were arrested are British nationals in their mid-20s. What can you make of that?
KAYYEM: I think that information basically excludes one theory that the British government would be investigating, which was - was there a Iranian sleeper cell that was sort of pushed into or sent to Britain to do damage? That's the only thing this information seems to exclude at this stage. These are British nationals, 20-something, which tends to be, you know, the age of sort of radicalization or terror activity.
They drove over two hours to get close to the base. And I would say common sense tells you that, you know, three white vans in the middle of the night parking by an Air Force base is not generally a peaceful thing. And so they are very, very concerned about what these men were able to do, but still have not confirmed, you know, what was animating this kind of activity.
INSKEEP: You said there's a theory that can be eliminated - the idea of an Iranian sleeper cell.
KAYYEM: Yeah.
INSKEEP: What are some of the theories - hypotheses - that would be live for investigators at this moment, based on what little we know?
KAYYEM: So given that they're British nationals, one would be, sort of, what is their background? What is their political, national, religious affinity? And were these men radicalized sort of generally because of the war in Iran, which is deeply unpopular also in - not just in the United States, but in Britain? So they're looking at a radicalization process brought by a war without any specific direction by Iran itself. And this is what we experience here in the United States often.
INSKEEP: Self...
KAYYEM: So that would be...
INSKEEP: Self-radicalization is what you're...
KAYYEM: Self radicalization or just, you know, they have a common hatred. They look at this Air Force base. It's as close as they can get to sort of going after the United States. This is a major base for us. This is where our B-52s and B-1s launch from to attack Iran. There is yet, though - and this is why we're careful, because the British government is confirming nothing yet. We - that this could be - I don't want to say unrelated to the war, but it may not be directly tied to, you know, anyone with affinity to Iran.
There are protests around the area, as your reporter was showing. The British have been nervous about Russian-related terrorism. So we simply don't know right now in terms of the motivation, even though, because of what is going on in the world, because of what Iran has said about this base, that that would be the primary theory going into any investigation - is that this is tied to the war in Iran.
INSKEEP: I feel the need to underline what we don't know here. We don't...
KAYYEM: Yeah.
INSKEEP: ...Even know for sure that there was a bomb, right? We know there was a bomb disposal robot, but we don't know what they found.
KAYYEM: That's exactly right. So right now all we know - we know sort of a variety of things that are in conflict right now. And that's why we're awfully careful about saying that this is, you know, automatically a terrorism incident. The British are keeping the terror sort of identification, or terrorism investigation identification, aligned with this case right now, but we have not heard that there were explosive materials in the vans. We don't know if the men were armed. We don't know, you know, whether there might have been sort of follow-on or other threats that may have come behind it. So we simply don't know how serious or acute of a threat they were that night.
We also - there is some conflicting information between what President Trump said - that these men were being followed for a long period of time - and the oddity that, if that's true, that these men were able to get so close to the Air Force base and were only disclosed by a farmer who was looking outside saying, this is awfully weird that you have these men in vans near the base. If it's true that these men were being surveyed, the British police or, you know, British counterterrorism officials are going to have to account for - how did they get so close, if they did, to an attack?
INSKEEP: Just got about 20 seconds here, but is it your sense that the U.K. and the U.S. still collaborate closely on intelligence and counterterrorism, even as President Trump criticizes all allies?
KAYYEM: Absolutely. I mean, this is at the tactical level. That information-sharing's going on 'cause we have a common interest, which is obviously to protect our population and their population. At the strategic level - you know, the speeches - there is a lot - there's still, you know, a lot of disagreements going on.
INSKEEP: Juliette Kayyem of Harvard. She writes the Substack Early Warning. Thanks so much.
KAYYEM: Thank you. Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.
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