Andy Burnham and his Government have firmly pointed the finger at Iran for a spate of recent incidents on British and European soil. In particular, they have accused the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) of being behind the incident at RAF Fairford late last month, when five men were detained near the airbase used by a US bomber.
About 30 countries joined the UK on Monday in condemning what they said was a pattern of IRGC-linked operations, issuing a statement that said it showed the “IRGC’s continued willingness to project hostile activity beyond its borders through covert networks and proxy actors”.
It said Fairford came soon after a recent campaign of attacks across Europe by pro-Iranian Islamist militants targeting Jewish communities, Iranian journalists and US interests.
What we know about Christa Pike’s botched execution
Recordings of the calls made to emergency services after the failed execution of Christa Pike reveal confusion and delays to her care, as her lawyers fight to get her off death row.
Who is Christa Pike?
- The 50-year-old was given the death penalty for killing her 19-year-old classmate Colleen Slemmer in 1995.
- She was set to be the first woman executed in Tennesee for more than 200 years before the botched injection.
Pike’s lawyers are now arguing for her sentenced to be commuted to life without parole, arguing she cannot be subjected to the death penalty twice.
Help was delayed by half an hour
Ambulance workers were not cleared to enter Riverbend Prison in Tennessee until half an hour after the first call was made, recordings obtained by the reveal.
The initial call came at 8.40pm on 30 September, an hour after the two attempted lethal injections, and crews were let into the prison at 9.11pm.
4 min read
What did prison officials say?
The recording of the first call has not been released, but at 9.03pm, a dispatcher said it was a “false call” and there was “no medical assistance needed at Riverbend Prison”. At 9.07pm officials from the prison’s central control confirmed they “did not make” the initial call.
At the same time, a first responder said there was someone “outside the gate at the prison telling us that it’s real and demanding us to go in”, and asked for someone from the prison to come out to speak to them.
Pike taken to hospital
- Pike was taken to hospital at 9.34pm.
- She has now been discharged after 10 days.
4 min read
Tom Cruise film Digger forecast to lose $245m at box office
With ticket sales slumping in the film’s third week in cinemas, is set to lose its studio, Warner Bros, hundreds of millions as it fails to recoup its $280 (£211m) production and marketing costs.
On course to be a historic flop
Tom Cruise’s satirical comedy, in which he stars as oil tycoon Digger Rockwell, has taken just $35m at the box office so far, with ticket sales dropping by 60 per cent this weekend.
It is on track to take $50m according to , which would make it one of only a handful of films to lose a nine-figure sum.
3 min read
How bad is it?
- Critics say Cruise gives a poor performance and have labelled the film his “vanity project”.
- The secret twist is said to be too “meta” and the script not funny.
3 min read
Women’s autoimmune conditions more likely to be misdiagnosed
Women are up to 75 per cent more likely to have an autoimmune condition misdiagnosed as psychosomatic than men, and face longer waits for treatment, according to new research.
What did the study show?
A study of 6,607 patients found that
43%
of women reported their autoimmune symptoms had been misdiagnosed as psychiatric, compared to 33 per cent of men.
Women were overall 46 per cent more likely to receive a psychiatric misdiagnosis.
34%
of women received a psychosomatic (physical symptoms caused or worsened by psychological factors) misdiagnosis compared to 22 percent of men.
What is an autoimmune condition?
These occur when the body mistakenly attacks its own tissues, and many are more common in women. Diseases include multiple sclerosis, rheumatoid arthritis and lupus, and symptoms range from fatigue and low mood to pain and digestive issues.
Women reported a longer period between onset of these symptoms and diagnosis than men, with more appointments in between.
4 min read
Women struggle to be believed, says researcher
Although labels such as hysteria are outdated, and fortunately rarely used nowadays, as women we still often have a harder time having our symptoms believed and therefore addressed accurately
Shaista Tayabali, co-author and patient partner at the University of Cambridge and University of East Anglia
More health from The i Paper
Breaking Bad actor RJ Mitte dies aged 34
Who was RJ Mitte?
The American actor was cast as Bryan Cranston’s on-screen disabled son when he was 14, and drew on his experience of living with cerebral palsy for the role.
His disability is rarely mentioned in the show, which ran from 2008 to 2013, with Walter ‘Flynn’ White Junior defying his father and cracking jokes at his expense. He won a Screen Actor’s Guild award for his performance in the role in 2014.
What did he do after ?
Mitte continued acting with roles in Talking to Strangers and Switched at Birth. He also created The Mitte Foundation, a charity to support community initiatives, and was an ambassador for United Cerebral Palsy.
He died on Monday at what is believed to be his home in Brownsville, Texas, aged 34. No cause of death has been determined.
3 min read
I’m in deep despair as I write this tonight…That kid was still pretty raw when we started shooting the pilot in February 2007, but little by little we watched him grow into a real fine actor…All that promise and potential is now such a loss.
bryan cranston, Actor for Walter white in , on instagram
Watch more from The i Paper
Midwives win £750,000 over nitrous oxide exposure
More than 120 maternity staff at Basildon University Hospital have been awarded almost £750,000 after they were exposed to high levels of nitrous oxide, which is given to women during childbirth, at work.
How did midwives get exposed to the gas?
- Leaky pipes and poor ventilation caused exposure to the gas.
- Midwives reported fatigue, headaches, brain fog and anxiety.
6 min read
Who got the payout?
The payout was awarded to staff who worked at the hospital between 2021 and 2023, after the Royal College of Midwives (RCM) took legal action against the hospital.
Roughly 80 members of the RCM received compensation along with around 60 others.
The union said the hospital knew about the leaks in 2021 but staff were not warned about the risks until October 2022.
Watch more from The i Paper
The UK towns at risk of running out of water this winter
Five successive heatwaves and the warmest summer on record have left millions of Britons living in drought conditions, which experts believe could remain in place for the foreseeable future unless there is a “significant amount of rainfall” this winter.
Which regions are in drought?
- Yorkshire became the latest area to fall into drought last Friday.
- All of central, southern and eastern England are already in drought.
4 min read
Eight reservoirs ‘exceptionally low’
The i Paper understands the Environment Agency is concerned about the low levels at Wimbleball, Ardingly, Clatworthy, Colliford, Hanningfield and Abberton.
These are variously operated by South West Water, South East Water, Wessex Water and Essex and Suffolk Water.
England would need 120 per cent of typical rainfall over the next seven months just to be considered out of the drought status.
3 min read
2 min read
When will hosepipe bans be lifted?
No bans have ended in the past month, with restrictions on water usage still in place in most of southern and eastern England, affecting almost 30 million people.
- Professor Liz Bentley, chief executive of the Royal Meteorological Society, said the bans would stay in place for the forseeable future unless there is a “significant amount of rainfall” soon.
The IRGC has been active for decades, but since Donald Trump launched his war against Iran in February, its power – and potential threat – has grown, as has its likely willingness to go after targets far from Iran’s shores. Fairford was a reminder of how this could come back to bite countries like the UK.
The IRGC was established in 1979 as a revolutionary army under Iran’s new supreme leader, with the new regime not trusting the regular Iranian armed forces, particularly the air force, which was sympathetic to the old regime. It would go on to make its reputation in the war with Iraq (1980-88), the foundational event for how the Iranian regime sees its role in the region.
In the subsequent years, the IRGC has become a major force, with about 190,000 men and a further 600,000 members of the Basij militia, brought under IRGC control in 2007, which is primarily responsible for suppressing domestic unrest. It also controls entire swathes of the Iranian economy, including banking, shipping, manufacturing and the illicit export of oil.
Membership of the IRGC – and in particular past service in the war with Iraq – is a sure path to political prominence in Iran, but until recently it was one of a number of routes. Trump and Israel’s move to take out the top tier of Iran’s leadership in the first days of the current conflict in February took out many of its rivals.
The Iranian regime had prepared for the grim inevitability of its leaders being targeted by creating a deep substitute bench. The gaps were filled not with clerics or civilian politicians but by hardened IRGC veterans. This included Mojtaba Khamenei, son of the assassinated supreme leader, Ali Khamenei, who had fought in the final year of the Iran-Iraq War before going on to train as a cleric.
Mojtaba Khamenei is now Iran’s supreme leader, although there is doubt about his health, after he was injured in an airstrike in February that killed other members of his immediate family. He has not been seen or heard in public since, with written instructions allegedly from him being issued by IRGC members.
Mohammad Bagher Ghalibaf, the powerful Speaker of Iran’s parliament, was also an IRGC officer throughout the 1980-88 war, before going on to head the air force and then Iran’s police force.
The US and Israel may have inadvertently strengthened the group. They made the same mistake in January 2020, when they assassinated Major-General Qasem Soleimani, the charismatic Quds Force leader who was one of the few genuinely popular national figures the regime had produced.
The IRGC now has a far stronger hand in Iran, and that could be having an impact abroad.
Because Iran is a revolutionary regime pursuing a regional policy of resistance to external enemies, it works with external proxies to fight wars far from Iran’s own borders.
Iranian military experts were heavily embedded with Hezbollah in Lebanon and the Houthis in Yemen – both heavily armed by Iran – and provided expertise to the Assad regime in Syria. The Houthis are currently waging a war against Saudi Arabia, with missile attacks on one of its main airports over the weekend.
Iran also helped various Iraqi Shia militias to wage a more deadly campaign, using sophisticated IEDs, against Western forces in Iraq in the aftermath of the 2003 invasion.
The IRGC, meanwhile, has its own ‘aerospace’ command, which has come into its own this year, being responsible for the drone and missile attacks reigning down on military bases around the Gulf and hitting tankers trying to traverse the Strait of Hormuz.
As in the case of Russian operations in Europe, Iran does not rely on a single agency to do its dirty work abroad. The Ministry of Intelligence and Security (MOIS) has repeatedly used accredited diplomats to foment terrorist plots, usually against exiled Iranian dissidents. The ministry has about 30,000 agents and its budget has grown tenfold in recent years. MOIS works closely with Iran’s Quds Force in operations to murder dissidents and separatists within and outside Iran itself.
These nefarious agencies are involved in recruiting people they task with murder or disruption. This indirect approach conserves more valuable Iranian agents.
When it comes to Fairford, the arrested men have been released on bail, and details of what actually happened are yet to be released. But even if the ‘plot’ was merely a feint to probe the defences of sensitive UK bases, it was an extraordinary development.
Some experts have speculated that Iran was actually seeking to replicate Ukraine’s 2025 Operation Spiderweb drone attack on Russian bomber bases, where drones were launched from containers on trucks, where the drivers didn’t even know what was inside. The men involved at Fairford may have just been hired patsies, a tactic more commonly deployed by Russian intelligence on foreign soil.
Whatever the reality, the IRGC – a shadowy group at the heart of Iran’s regime – is now being seen as a much more worrying threat across the Middle East and beyond.
Michael Burleigh is an historian, commentator and senior fellow at LSE Ideas.