In a striking example of Iran’s continuing terrorist threat to the West, United Kingdom authorities arrested eight men in two separate operations on Saturday.

The first operation saw five men, including four Iranians, detained in five different areas of England. They were arrested on suspicion that they intended to “target a specific premises.” Those premises have not been publicly identified but are understood to be related to the Jewish or Israeli community in London.

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Three other Iranians were then arrested in another operation in London. The U.K. Home Secretary (DHS Secretary equivalent) effectively confirmed the Iranian state’s direct involvement in at least one of the investigations by stating that they include “some of the biggest counter state threat and counter terrorism operations that we have seen in recent years.”

The first investigation was of particular concern to authorities. Video shows that military special forces from either the Army’s SAS unit (Delta Force equivalent) or the Navy’s SBS unit (Navy SEALs equivalent) participated in the arrest of at least one of the men in that investigation. This is highly unusual, indicating authorities feared that the man was in possession of a live explosive device or had access to military grade weaponry. The diffusion of the five cell members across England also suggests some measure of operational training and effort to mitigate the risk of detection.

Still, the fact that the cell’s target was known to authorities also suggests they had significant insight into its activities. The U.K.’s domestic intelligence service, MI5, is understood to have played a key role in this investigation.

Interestingly, the second round of arrests in London appears most likely to have a direct Iran nexus. The legislation employed to arrest the individuals involved pertains to hostile foreign state activity.

While authorities are describing the two investigations as separate, the involvement of Iranian men in both and the simultaneous timing of these arrests indicate a concern that there may have been some peripheral nexus between the two groups. It also bears noting that Iranian terrorist threats are diverse in origin, including members of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, the Ministry of Intelligence, various Iranian/aligned militia organizations, and individuals specially contracted to carry out an attack.

Saturday’s events underline that even as it pursues nuclear talks with the Trump administration, Iran has both the ideological intent and the operational capacity to pursue highly aggressive attacks on Western soil. The damage that Israel has imposed on Iran and its proxies over the past twelve months has furthered this threat consideration by motivating Iran’s supreme leader, Ali Khamenei, to believe he must restore deterrent credibility against Israel. But Israel and the U.K. are far from the only Iranian threat vectors. Active threats against the U.S. include assassination plots against numerous officials who served in President Donald Trump’s first administration, the president included.

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Put simply, dealing with Iran requires both an openness to hardheaded diplomacy on issues such as Iran’s nuclear program, and a keen focus on defeating — and better deterring — Iranian malfeasance in the shadows.