Trump’s feedback seem to confirm reports by US media that a new risk had led to the bombers being eliminated, which follows a main incident on 27 September when police were alerted to three “suspicious vehicles” close to the airbase.
While talking to a gaggle of reporters outside the White House in Washington, Trump was requested if there was a “specific threat” that led the US to pull it’s bombers from the airbase.
Trump replied: “Yeah I think we can say that. They didn’t fly out by accident.
“There were some threats. And rather than tempting the enemy, we’ll seize the enemy and beat the enemy. But why should we go away them there? So we moved them around a little bit. Not very far.”
He added that Washington “truly knows the people that made the risk”, but did not confirm who.
RAF Fairford – in the Cotswolds in Gloucestershire – has been at the centre of an incident being investigated by counter-terror police.
Five men were initially arrested on suspicion of terror offences and subsequently released on bail. A sixth man, a UK-Iranian national, was also later arrested and released on bail.
Following the release of the first five men, Trump criticised the decision and US officials suggested Iran could have been involved in the incident.
Whitehall sources have not disputed that the decision from Washington to remove the bombers was in response to the incident at the airbase in Gloucestershire.
Speaking earlier on Monday, US Secretary of State Marco Rubio said he would not directly tie last week’s incident to the decision to pull bombers from RAF Fairford.
He added: “It’s not uncommon to see motion of property to completely different components of the world primarily based on workout routines, redeployments, people altering out and new people coming in, new planes coming in and outdated planes going out.”
Rubio said the US still has full confidence in the security of all its bases and that British authorities have been very cooperative since the incident.
US Vice President JD Vance later said the bombers were moved out of an “abundance of warning”, adding Washington feels Iran is doing what it has “achieved for 49 years… which is have interaction in acts of terrorism against the US and against a lot of other people”.
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