Maddow: Patel picks a bad time to get petty with counterterrorism
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How could the Iran war raise the risk of retaliation against U.S. interests?
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Thanks to you at home for joining us this hour. Really happy to have you here. We are watching developments tonight in a strange story out of Great Britain involving an airfield there, a military air base that the US military has been using for its B-1 bombers in support of Trump's war in Iran. This weekend, Saturday night after midnight, a local resident who lives nearby that base, a farmer from one of the small towns near this military base in rural Gloucestershire, England, She called police in the middle of the night after she said she basically stumbled across a bunch of young men and a bunch of white vans that were all right near that military base for no apparent reason in the middle of the night.
Police responded and whatever they thought was going on there, they ended up evacuating dozens of nearby homes. They brought in a bomb disposal robot to get into the vans and go through them. This was described by the British government as a major incident. The British government activated its COBRA protocols for major national security incidents. And as the news started to break here and worldwide about this situation in Great Britain, there was a lot of discussion about Iran's threats from earlier this year. They're threats to any country providing help to the United States in Trump's war in Iran. This summer in late July, for example, Iran told the UK explicitly that if any British base was used by the US military for this war against Iran, that would make that base in the UK a legitimate military target for Iran.
Iran issued that threat in July. Because of that threat, because of that context, when we learned in today's news that five young men had been arrested and those vans were seized outside the gates of this rural airbase, Well, there was, for obvious reasons, lots and lots of speculation about who these five young men might be and what this might have all been about. Lots of speculation, lots of worry, and then lots of head scratching when it was announced this afternoon that all five of the people who had been arrested were let go. They were all released on bail. And we really do not know what this was about. All five men who were arrested in the LICO are said to be British nationals. They're all from London.
We don't know anything about what they were allegedly doing at this base or what their motivations might have been. We have been watching this story closely all day today and tonight trying to learn more about what exactly happened here. For example, even after they let those guys go, it wasn't until late this afternoon, our time, that local residents were finally allowed to go back to their homes. It's a really interesting story, really intriguing. We've been watching it closely. And we'll let you know as we learn more. But for us here in the United States, it raises an important question about the cost of Trump's war in Iran. It raises the question as to whether the cost of Trump's war in Iran is something that we've really adequately grappled with.
Is it a cost that's not just going to be measured in lives lost? And people injured and buildings destroyed and facilities and aircraft and equipment destroyed and the shuttering of the Strait of Hormuz and all the other oil transit routes and infrastructure that have driven your gas and diesel prices and fertilizer prices to all-time record highs. the multibillion-dollar cost just of anti-aircraft munitions alone, let alone all the other missiles and materiel we have expended in this war, on top of all those costs which we have barely grappled with, this still-developing strange story at this rural airbase in the Cotswolds in England, it also raises this very uncomfortable question for us Americans as to whether there's an additional cost of this war, which might be an additional risk for us here at home of potential retaliatory violence.
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Chapters
8 chapters
1
How could the Iran war raise the risk of retaliation against U.S. interests?
0:00–4:28
2
Why did Kash Patel demote FBI counterterrorism officials over calls to Stephen Miller’s wife?
4:28–9:23
3
What sensitive FBI employee data was exposed in the bureau’s massive hack?
9:23–12:14
4
Why did the U.S. and Russia remove human oversight from AI weapons?
12:14–20:59
5
How do attacks on the press threaten independent journalism and democracy?
20:59–28:49
6
What is the lawsuit challenging Trump’s ban on White House reporters?
28:49–33:07
7
How is Russia using deepfake videos to influence the 2026 elections?
33:07–35:36
8
Why was journalist David Corn targeted by Russian disinformation?
35:36–45:29
Speakers
2 identifiedMore from The Rachel Maddow Show
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