The Pentagon confirmed on Sunday it had removed the B1 bombers from the base in England back to their home stations in America.
Page A3From§Eachthe coffee break edition — 6 October 2026
ZERO TRANSFERS
Britain 'punishes' Israel with sanctions that have not suspended a single weapons license
As it ran on the front
Twelve B-1B bombers lifted off from RAF Fairford over the weekend and flew home to American soil. The Pentagon confirmed it Sunday — the same aircraft that struck Iran, gone a week after British police arrested five men near the base on suspicion of preparing terrorist acts. The White House itself called it a "threat" worth acting on.
Tuesday's piece puts it plainly: rewarded for saving lives with sanctions. It is a clean, emotionally sound argument. A country does you a favor, you punish it for it. Except — hold on, back up. The sanctions in question are the settlement sanctions Foreign Secretary Ed Miliband announced last month, aimed at Israel's illegal West Bank settlements, including a weapons-shipment component. That program predates the Fairford arrests entirely. It was not issued "for" saving British lives; it was issued in September, over Gaza and the occupation, and the Fairford arrests came after.…
…(cont) And here is the second collapse, the one that actually guts the "rewarded" framing: according to disclosures made to Parliament, reported by Declassified UK and run by Common Dreams on September 24, the sanctions regime has not actually suspended or revoked a single weapons license. None. Britain announced a punishment and then, by its own paperwork, did not punish anything that ships. The premise — Israel helped, Britain hurt them for it — requires a hurt that the government's own disclosures say never arrived.
The live fight in Britain isn't whether Israel is being punished too hard. It's whether anything at all has actually stopped shipping.
Count the licenses suspended by the new sanctions regime: zero. That's the number the "rewarded with sanctions" headline needs a reader not to go looking for.
“They want you believing Britain's punishing Israel over the Fairford bust, but the sanctions paperwork pulled zero weapons licenses — zero. Same bombers that hit Iran fly home after a bomb plot, and the only thing that actually moved was a press release, not a shipment. Follow the receipts, not the headline: the arms keep flowing, they just added a sentence saying they don't.”
“Look, the Prime Minister stood up and announced real consequences for Israel — real teeth, real cost to the relationship. Okay, it's a settlement-only measure, and — hang on, the parliamentary disclosures say zero licenses suspended, zero revoked. That's... that's not the number I meant to cite. The point is the optics were tough on Israel, even if the shipments weren't.”
The receipts
The Pentagon flew all 12 of its B-1B bombers out of RAF Fairford over the weekend and sent them home. Those are the aircraft that flew America’s strikes on Iran, and they left a week after British police arrested five men near the base on suspicion of preparing terrorist acts. Andy Burnham, the prime minister, […]
· Palestine solidarity demonstration tells Labour in Liverpool: end arms sales to Israel now from the morgue, 27 Sep 2026
· UK's New Israel Sanctions Haven't Actually Suspended Any Weapons Transfers from the morgue, 24 Sep 2026
· British Jews speak out in support of UK’s new settler sanctions from the morgue, 10 Sep 2026
· Incensed reaction from Israel apologists shows new British sanctions really matter from the morgue, 9 Sep 2026
This page is a back-issue: the story as it ran, receipts as they were. The current edition is at the front. The byline is a pen name for a column drafted by a machine and checked by the editor: how this is made.