WarMonitor 🇺🇲🇺🇦
RT @ZechariahSharab: The Houthis do not represent #Yemen 🇾🇪
They killed 500,000 innocent Yemenis over the past decade
They ethnically cleansed #Yemen's ancient #Jewish community
They have been completely blockading Yemen's 3rd largest city, Taiz, for 9 years
A historical perspective in this 🧵
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RT @ZechariahSharab: The Houthis do not represent #Yemen 🇾🇪
They killed 500,000 innocent Yemenis over the past decade
They ethnically cleansed #Yemen's ancient #Jewish community
They have been completely blockading Yemen's 3rd largest city, Taiz, for 9 years
A historical perspective in this 🧵
🧵1) The Houthis recently made the news with attempted rocket attacks on #Israel but they have been wreaking havoc in #Yemen for over a decade
Like #Hamas, The Houthis are funded by #Iran. They killed over 500,000 Yemenis and ethnically cleansed Yemen's entire Jewish community - Zechariah Shar'abi | זכריה | زكرياtweet
OSINT
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Nuno Felix
RT @PatrickBury: Good stuff here on the realities of the “only fuel smugglers” hypothesis
I have received various questions and comments on some of my previous assessments on the #RAF #Fairford major incident — including suggestions that it “may have been a dry run”, and others that it was simply five lads trying to nick diesel. Public facts do not settle it, but they sit poorly with opportunistic fuel theft.
- I'll explain:
- Police found petrol — described as an accelerant — and no #IEDs. So if it was a dry run, it was not a dry run in the sense of empty rehearsal vehicles. There was fuel on board. They also released the five men on bail with strict conditions while the investigation continues. That does not prove innocence; it also does not prove a completed bomb plot.
- The farmer who called it in says she did not see five men. She puts it at eight to ten, hooded and in balaclavas, splitting across fields and towards the base when her headlights hit them.
- Police arrested five and have indicated they are not looking for anyone else. Night can inflate a count. It can also mean people ran and were not caught.
- I also looked at #UK diesel theft cases to try to discern a pattern. Some surface details overlap with diesel nicking — and several important ones do not.
- While vans, drums and fake fuel livery may not be exotic for the job, they are not the norm. Large teams are definitely not the norm.
- A van may be a standard tool when thieves want volume, not a quick field raid. Modified vans with concealed tanks are an established tactic for taking large amounts from bowsers, generators and tanks.
- Fake or cloned fuel-company markings are not unheard of; a van that looks like a delivery or “Fuel 2You” vehicle draws less attention on a country lane at night.
- Barrels in the back fit the usual kit list. Cotswold villages around Fairford include off-grid properties that store heating oil, and farms and sites store diesel. In that narrow sense, “vans, barrels, fuel branding” is not exotic.
- But, caught rural jobs are usually two men, sometimes one or three — often local or from the next county (7–20 miles), on quads or a single van, after farm tanks, bowsers or HGVs. They steal red diesel, white diesel or heating oil, then leave.
- Fairford does not match that. The suspects were 23–25 and from Camden, Westminster and Willesden — about 80–100 miles away.
- Three vans as a convoy, masks, petrol not farm diesel, and a pitch-up next to a US-used bomber base at 1am is not where you go to pinch a heating-oil tank.
- You do not need eight to ten people to siphon a bowser. Extra bodies are a liability.
- Fuel thieves also tend to run away from the hard target, not towards the perimeter.
- So the vans and barrels can look like theft. The distance, the crowd, the masks, the petrol and the location do not.
- I'd say judging from the above a dry run or interrupted approach is a cleaner fit with those facts. The vans and fuel could be logistics for a later incendiary or vehicle-borne attack; the night visit could be route reconnaissance, timing, or testing access while already carrying the accelerant.
- “Just five lads after diesel” is the weakest fit.
- Two last points. First, the release of the five suspects on bail, as much as it was surprising, matches a run of recent UK and European cases involving disposable, single-use agents recruited by hostile states—chiefly #Russia and #Iran.
- In similar UK proxy cases that I have looked at (warehouse arsons, attacks on #Jewish sites, reconnaissance jobs) suspects have also been bailed while police investigate who directed them and what they knew. Detention without charge is tightly limited; proving the wider network or state link takes longer.
- Second, a night-time approach to RAF Fairford with petrol and fake fuel vans could have been a deniable signal from a malign actor that they can reach the base used against them, even without a finished bomb. A “message” does not need explosives to be the[...]
RT @PatrickBury: Good stuff here on the realities of the “only fuel smugglers” hypothesis
I have received various questions and comments on some of my previous assessments on the #RAF #Fairford major incident — including suggestions that it “may have been a dry run”, and others that it was simply five lads trying to nick diesel. Public facts do not settle it, but they sit poorly with opportunistic fuel theft.
- I'll explain:
- Police found petrol — described as an accelerant — and no #IEDs. So if it was a dry run, it was not a dry run in the sense of empty rehearsal vehicles. There was fuel on board. They also released the five men on bail with strict conditions while the investigation continues. That does not prove innocence; it also does not prove a completed bomb plot.
- The farmer who called it in says she did not see five men. She puts it at eight to ten, hooded and in balaclavas, splitting across fields and towards the base when her headlights hit them.
- Police arrested five and have indicated they are not looking for anyone else. Night can inflate a count. It can also mean people ran and were not caught.
- I also looked at #UK diesel theft cases to try to discern a pattern. Some surface details overlap with diesel nicking — and several important ones do not.
- While vans, drums and fake fuel livery may not be exotic for the job, they are not the norm. Large teams are definitely not the norm.
- A van may be a standard tool when thieves want volume, not a quick field raid. Modified vans with concealed tanks are an established tactic for taking large amounts from bowsers, generators and tanks.
- Fake or cloned fuel-company markings are not unheard of; a van that looks like a delivery or “Fuel 2You” vehicle draws less attention on a country lane at night.
- Barrels in the back fit the usual kit list. Cotswold villages around Fairford include off-grid properties that store heating oil, and farms and sites store diesel. In that narrow sense, “vans, barrels, fuel branding” is not exotic.
- But, caught rural jobs are usually two men, sometimes one or three — often local or from the next county (7–20 miles), on quads or a single van, after farm tanks, bowsers or HGVs. They steal red diesel, white diesel or heating oil, then leave.
- Fairford does not match that. The suspects were 23–25 and from Camden, Westminster and Willesden — about 80–100 miles away.
- Three vans as a convoy, masks, petrol not farm diesel, and a pitch-up next to a US-used bomber base at 1am is not where you go to pinch a heating-oil tank.
- You do not need eight to ten people to siphon a bowser. Extra bodies are a liability.
- Fuel thieves also tend to run away from the hard target, not towards the perimeter.
- So the vans and barrels can look like theft. The distance, the crowd, the masks, the petrol and the location do not.
- I'd say judging from the above a dry run or interrupted approach is a cleaner fit with those facts. The vans and fuel could be logistics for a later incendiary or vehicle-borne attack; the night visit could be route reconnaissance, timing, or testing access while already carrying the accelerant.
- “Just five lads after diesel” is the weakest fit.
- Two last points. First, the release of the five suspects on bail, as much as it was surprising, matches a run of recent UK and European cases involving disposable, single-use agents recruited by hostile states—chiefly #Russia and #Iran.
- In similar UK proxy cases that I have looked at (warehouse arsons, attacks on #Jewish sites, reconnaissance jobs) suspects have also been bailed while police investigate who directed them and what they knew. Detention without charge is tightly limited; proving the wider network or state link takes longer.
- Second, a night-time approach to RAF Fairford with petrol and fake fuel vans could have been a deniable signal from a malign actor that they can reach the base used against them, even without a finished bomb. A “message” does not need explosives to be the[...]