Gloucestershire police were called at about 12.45am on Sunday to a report of three suspicious vehicles near Whelford, a village in the flat gravel country a short distance from the perimeter of RAF Fairford. Five men were arrested. They were held first on suspicion of offences under the Explosives Act, and subsequently on suspicion of preparing a terrorist act. A major incident was declared. About 85 households were evacuated. An Army explosive ordnance disposal team spent Sunday morning examining the vehicles inside a cordon reported at 440 yards.

Those are the numbers, as published by Sunday lunchtime and attributed in every case to the officers who gave them. It is worth setting down immediately what they do not amount to.

Nothing detonated. No attack occurred. The arrests were made before anything happened, which is what a counter-terrorism arrest is for. Nobody has been charged with anything, and the five men are suspects, held on suspicion, with the presumption of innocence attaching to each of them in the ordinary way. Neither Gloucestershire Constabulary nor Counter Terrorism Policing has said publicly what, if anything, was found in the three vehicles. No named official has alleged that Iran directed, sponsored, funded or had any connection at all to the five men in custody.