Trump Says Iran 'Yes' Likely Tied to Flydubai Cockpit Attack, but Israeli Security Officials Say They've Found No Evidence Yet

Since Flydubai Flight FZ1073 made its emergency landing in Tabuk, Saudi Arabia, on Wednesday after an Omani co-pilot allegedly stabbed Indian Captain Smit Machchhar and sent the jet into a near-14,000-foot plunge, investigators in five countries have been chasing one question: was Iran behind it. By Thursday, that question had split into two competing accounts.

Asked by Fox News' Peter Doocy whether Iran was linked to the attacker, President Trump said, "I would say the answer, based on what I'm hearing, is yes, but we're working on it right now." He added that if Iran is confirmed to be involved, "they'll be hit very hard." Earlier, Trump had told reporters at the White House that the co-pilot was "perhaps a terrorist or perhaps a whack job," a framing reported by both the Washington Post and the Times of India.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu went further on the attacker's background, telling reporters the co-pilot "underwent Islamic radical indoctrination" and was likely suicidal, based on what he called preliminary indications gathered from the man's personal history. "It looks very likely that he was going to down the plane," Netanyahu said, according to the Guardian, while cautioning that "final conclusions had yet to be made."

But the Guardian and Reuters reported a very different read from inside Israel's own security establishment. Two Israeli security officials told Reuters their initial assessment is that the co-pilot probably acted alone, and that they have not yet found evidence of Iranian involvement. That's a direct contradiction of the narrative Trump and Netanyahu were pushing publicly the same day, and neither the Guardian's reporting nor Reuters' sourcing has been matched by any on-record Israeli or American official contradicting it.

The Daily Wire, citing Israeli journalist Yosef Yisrael, reported that a coworker of the suspect described him as unusually devout, praying frequently and refusing to shake hands with women, calling him "out of step with his surroundings." That account comes from a single unnamed coworker relayed through one Israeli journalist and has not been independently corroborated by investigators in the UAE, Saudi Arabia, or Oman.

Where The Investigation Actually Stands

The facts that are confirmed: the co-pilot, still not publicly identified, was arrested by Saudi security services on landing in Tabuk and interrogated there before being medically cleared and flown to Abu Dhabi on Thursday morning alongside Captain Machchhar, according to a statement from Saudi Arabia's Interior Ministry reported by CNN. The UAE's prosecutor general has formally opened an investigation into whether the incident involved terrorist activity, prior planning, or outside direction, a move confirmed by the UAE's state news agency and reported by both CBC and NPR. Because the aircraft is UAE-registered, Emirati law applies to the case regardless of where the plane landed.

A regional official familiar with the investigation told the Associated Press, as carried by the Guardian, that "all possible scenarios, from terrorism to mental disorders, are being looked into. Nothing is ruled out for now." That's a far more cautious posture than either Trump's or Netanyahu's public comments on Thursday.

The Fairford Twist

In the same Fox News interview, Netanyahu added a new wrinkle to the ongoing story about the suspicious activity near RAF Fairford, the UK airbase used by American forces. Netanyahu said Israel had warned Britain of an Iranian-sponsored plot against the base before UK Prime Minister Keir Starmer's government announced sanctions on products from Israeli West Bank settlements on September 8. "We gave the Brits the intel that there was going to be an attack and it's an Iranian-sponsored attack. And pretty much the next day, they slapped sanctions on us," Netanyahu told Sean Hannity, calling the sequence "absurd."

That claim has not been confirmed by the British government. A UK government spokesperson said Wednesday there are "strong indications" Iran was involved in the Fairford activity but has not released public evidence, and Iran's embassy in London has called the speculation categorically false, with Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi saying on X that the UK was "barking up the wrong tree." Netanyahu's timeline, if accurate, would mean London acted on an Iran-linked security warning from Israel while simultaneously imposing economic penalties on Israel over settler violence that UK Foreign Secretary David Lammy has described as ethnic cleansing. No source has independently verified the sequence of the intelligence-sharing against the sanctions announcement.

For now, the UAE investigation remains open, the co-pilot remains in custody in Abu Dhabi, and the gap between what American and Israeli political leaders are saying publicly and what Israeli security officials are telling Reuters privately has not been resolved. Whether that gap closes with hard evidence of an Iranian hand, or with a finding that this was one radicalized man acting alone, will determine whether the Flydubai attack becomes another flashpoint in the broader Iran war or a closed criminal case under UAE jurisdiction.