From Cricket Pitch to Crisis: RAF Fairford Villagers Brace for Potential Iran Attack After Bomber Withdrawal Residents near RAF Fairford are gripped by fear and uncertainty after the sudden withdrawal of US B-1 bombers, fearing an Iranian attack. The quiet village has become the centre of a high-stakes drama, with security measures escalated and the community on edge. For the past ten days, villagers near RAF Fairford in Gloucestershire have felt as if they've been living through their own high-octane movie. That at least is how district councillor Tristan Wilkinson sums up their mood. Bomber Withdrawal Sparkles Like Movie Plot TwistFew would accuse him of being melodramatic.'This feels like another plot twist,' he says, referring to America's decision on Sunday to suddenly withdraw its £3.6billion fleet of B-1 bombers from the base to prevent them being wiped out in a fiendish Iranian drone attack. Certainly, the international emergency that fixed the world's attention on this quiet corner of the Cotswolds contains ingredients for a Hollywood blockbuster and, depending on how things unfold, perhaps a sequel too: Villagers evacuated from their homes, police swooping on terror suspects, secret agents deployed across Europe to name but a few.Yet the recent events are all too real, of course. Terrifyingly so. And the question locals keep asking is - what's going to happen next? Because events, claims and counter-claims are becoming curiouser and curiouser by the hour.Historical Base Transforms From Quiet Spot To HotspotFirst, what we know so far. Normally life moves slowly in Whelford, a leafy spot not two miles from the base's perimeter fence. Some remember when a Nasa space shuttle landed at the base in 1983 (Fairford was designated a Transoceanic Abort Landing site, to accommodate any shuttles needing an emergency landing spot, because of its two-mile runway). Indeed, the US has used the base for decades.But with no shops or pub, just a 19th-century church delivering one service a month, thrills are generally in short supply. Armed police officers are pictured stood outside an entrance to RAF Fairford in Gloucestershire last week The ordeal began when a local farmer spotted three white vans abandoned on a country road Five men (pictured) were later arrested near the base early on September 27, though that number has since risen to seven At least that was the case until March when former prime minister Sir Keir Starmer granted Washington permission to use the base as a staging post for airstrikes in the Middle East.Iranian Threats Put Local Villagers In Iranian CrosshairsThen the bombers, at £300million each, began to arrive. Suddenly Fairford was in Iran's crosshairs. And the good people of Whelford were about to find themselves at the centre of nerve-shredding drama. Tensions in the area had been mounting for some months.There was a notably heavier police presence after threats from Tehran. One woman, who has lived on the perimeter of RAF Fairford for around 50 years, said 'great big concrete walls' and vehicles had recently appeared at some of the base's gates. In March, Seyed Ali Mousavi, the Iranian ambassador to London, gave an interview in which he said Tehran was considering whether British military bases were legitimate targets after they were used by American bombers for strikes on Iran.Cricket Match Incident Signals Imminent Security BreachVillagers' nerves were further shaken in July when Iran's Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) singled out Fairford, saying it was indeed such a target and threatened to attack it. Were Hollywood to bring the events unfolding around the base to the screen, though, it could do worse than begin with a Saturday afternoon cricket match - for it was this that exposed significantly ratcheted-up tensions and indicated that some kind of incursion, or worse, was imminent.Armed police stopped the match near the perimeter fence at around 4.30pm on September 26 due to a 'live incident'. One of the group said: 'We'd played the evening before with no issue but on Saturday two guards ran to the fence with guns and said,