"It could be that Corbyn manages to run the gauntlet and get elected," Pompeo is heard telling U.K. Jewish leaders in the leaked recording. "It's possible. You should know, we won't wait for him to do those things to begin to push back. We will do our level best. It's too risky and too important and too hard once it's already happened."

The remark came in response to a hypothetical question should Corbyn become prime minister: "Would you be willing to work with us to take on actions if life becomes very difficult for Jews in the U.K.?"

A Labour spokesman warned that the U.S. was seeking to intervene in U.K. politics. The spokesman also promised to fight against anti-Semitism, which has been an increasing concern within the left-wing party.

"President Trump and his officials' attempts to decide who will be Britain's next prime minister are an entirely unacceptable interference in the U.K.'s democracy," said the unnamed source according to The Guardian, adding that the Labour Party was "fully committed to the support, defense and celebration of the Jewish community and is implacably opposed to anti-Semitism in any form".

In April, The Sunday Times reported that the Labour Party under Jeremy Corbyn's leadership has failed to take action against hundreds of cases of anti-Semitism by party members despite more than 850 recorded complaints.

Pompeo made his comments in the wake of Trump's three-day visit to the U.K. last week. During the trip, the U.S. president refused to meet with Corbyn, who instead joined in a protest of Trump's joint press conference with outgoing British Prime Minister Theresa May.

Trump has endorsed Boris Johnson for the leadership of the Conservative Party and prime minister.

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The site was discovered by the British Security Service, MI5, outside London in the autumn of 2015.

According to The Daily Telegraph, terrorists had stockpiled thousands of ice packs containing ammonium nitrate at a site just outside the British capital. Three metric tons of ammonium nitrate – a common ingredient in homemade bombs – was said to have been discovered.

A police source told the newspaper that the plot was "proper organized terrorism" and that enough explosive materials were stored to do "a lot of damage."

The covert operation was reportedly launched after the British Security Service received information from a foreign government, the name of which was not disclosed.

A U.K. intelligence source told The Sun, "MI5 worked independently and closely with international partners to disrupt the threat of malign intent from Iran and its proxies in the U.K."

According to the report, the discovery took place just a few months following a nuclear deal signed between Iran and the U.K. along with several other superpowers but the British government did not disclose the information to the public.

The news comes amid mounting tensions between Iran and the West and after Home Secretary Sajid Javid announced a blanket ban on those with links to Hezbollah.

The Iranian-backed Hezbollah, the Islamic republic's chief proxy in the Middle East, is a heavily armed terrorist group, which often does Iran's bidding overseas.

The Shiite organization has been designated as a terrorist group by several western countries, including the U.S., the U.K., Canada, Israel, and Arab League member Bahrain. Some countries, such as Australia and France, only classify the group's military wing as a terrorist organization.

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The resolution says the at the Iranian proxy group represents a "danger to [Germany's] constitutional order."

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Germany, like the European Union, only considers Hezbollah's so-called military wing as a terrorist organization. Nevertheless, EU members the Netherlands and the United Kingdom consider all of Hezbollah a terrorist entity, as do the United States, Canada, Israel, and even the Arab League.

"Hezbollah's goal is the destruction of Israel and the Jews, and we should not be offering a safe haven for them to hide in Germany and finance their armed struggle in Lebanon against Israel from our territory," senior AfD MP Beatrix von Storch said in a statement.

Last week, German Jewish leaders called on German Chancellor Angela Merkel to fully outlaw Hezbollah.

"The Central Council of Jews in Germany calls for a ban of the Shiite militia Hezbollah," said their leader, Josef Schuster, in the Germany daily Jewish paper Jüdische Allgemeine.

Schuster said that "a full ban of Hezbollah's organization has already happened in the Netherlands and the United Kingdom," adding that "Hezbollah is heavily financed by Iran, and Hezbollah poses, in its entirety, a threat to the entire world."

"A continuation of the distinction between their individual wings would be negligent and should, therefore, be corrected as soon as possible," said Schuster.

In a meeting last week with Merkel, US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo also urged the German government to fully ban the terrorist group.

"We're also hoping to get Germany's help – and we talked about this today – in recognizing Hezbollah as a unified entity and banning it from Germany as our ally, the United Kingdom, did this year," said Pompeo.

This article is reprinted with permission from JNS.org.

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Gholamhossein Esmaili, a judiciary spokesman, said on state television that the woman worked for the British Council cultural agency and was cooperating with Britain's foreign intelligence service, but did not identify her.

A friend of the sentenced woman named her as Aras Amiri and said was arrested while on a visit to Tehran in March 2018. The friend told Reuters that Amiri, 33, was resident in Britain but did not have British nationality.

She had gone on trial recently and was waiting a verdict, according to the friend.

The British Foreign Office said it was "very concerned" at the reports. "We have not been able to confirm any further details at this stage and are urgently seeking further information," a Foreign Office spokeswoman said.

Esmaili said the sentenced woman was a student in Britain before being recruited by the British Council to run its Iran desk, and was in charge of projects for "cultural infiltration" in Iran. He said the woman had been in custody for almost a year.

The British Council is the UK's international organization for cultural relations and educational opportunities, working in arts and culture, the English language, education and civil society.

The Council told Reuters it did not have offices or representatives in Iran, and did no work in the country.

It also said "our colleague who was detained last year is not head of 'the Iran desk,' [but rather] worked in Britain in a junior role to support and showcase the Iranian contemporary art scene to UK audiences."

The arrest of Iranians accused of espionage has increased since Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei said last year there had been "infiltration" of Western agents in the country.

Iran has been increasingly at odds with Western countries since the United States withdrew a year ago from a deal Tehran signed with global powers in 2015 to curb its nuclear program in return for the lifting of sanctions.

Britain is a signatory to the nuclear deal. Like other European signatories, it supports maintaining the deal.

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The warning came after the United States announced the deployment of the USS Abraham Lincoln aircraft carrier strike group to the Persian Gulf to counter an alleged but still-unspecified threat from Iran, the latest in a long line of such deployments to the strategic region.

"We are very worried about the risk of a conflict happening by accident, with an escalation that is unintended really on either side but ends with some kind of conflict," British Foreign Secretary Jeremy Hunt told reporters in Brussels.

"What we need is a period of calm to make sure that everyone understands what the other side is thinking," Hunt said. He added that he would "be sharing those concerns" Monday with European partners and visiting U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo.

The United States pulled out of the 2015 nuclear accord a year ago, saying it does nothing to stop Iran developing missiles or destabilizing the Middle East. The Europeans insist the agreement was never meant to address those issues but has been effective in curbing Iran's nuclear ambitions.

Tensions mounted last week when Iranian President Hassan Rouhani said that signatories to the deal now have 60 days to come up with a plan to shield his country from the sanctions imposed by U.S. President Donald Trump.

Hunt said that "if Iran becomes a nuclear power its neighbors are likely to want to become nuclear powers. This is already the most unstable region in the world. This would be a massive step in the wrong direction."

The meeting between Hunt, his counterparts from France and Germany, and EU foreign policy chief Federica Mogherini comes as the Europeans struggle to keep financial supply lines open to Iran to offset the impact of U.S. sanctions on the Islamic republic's shattered economy.

"We in Europe agree that this treaty is necessary for our security," German Foreign Minister Heiko Maas said. "Nobody wants Iran to get possession of an atomic bomb and that's been achieved so far."

Mogherini said the talks will focus on "how to continue to best support the full implementation of the nuclear deal."

As the U.S. sanctions bite, domestic pressure is increasing on Rouhani to demonstrate that Iran can still benefit from an agreement based on providing it with economic opportunities in exchange for limiting nuclear development.

Maas said the Europeans "are working on the assumption that Iran won't withdraw step by step from this treaty, but rather meet all of its commitments."

Even so, the EU cannot keep Iran's economy afloat alone.

The Europeans have set up a complicated barter-type system to skirt direct financial transactions with Iran and so evade possible U.S. sanctions. The workaround, dubbed INSTEX, is not yet operational as Iran has not completed its part of the scheme.

They have also introduced a "blocking statute" protecting European companies from the effects of U.S. sanctions, but many international corporations do more business in the United States than in Iran and have already severed ties there rather than risk running afoul of Washington.

"We have already initiated concrete steps in recent months, especially as concerns the payment channel and INSTEX. Now, this instrument needs to be further operationalized and used in order to continue implementing" the nuclear agreement, Maas said.

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"The British long-standing position is that we won't have lasting peace in Syria with that [Assad-led] regime, but regretfully, we do think he's going to be around for a while," Hunt told Sky News.

Nearly eight years into a war that has displaced millions of Syrians, Assad has recovered control of most of the country with support from Russia, Iran, and Iranian-backed Shi'ite Muslim groups such as Lebanon's Hezbollah.

Last week, the United Arab Emirates reopened its embassy in Damascus, marking a diplomatic boost for Assad from a U.S.-allied Arab state that once backed rebels fighting him.

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Jamil Tamimi, 59, killed 21-year-old exchange student Hannah Bladon on the Jerusalem light rail as she was going to a church where she volunteered. He targeted her at random when she came within his reach after offering her seat to an older woman, stabbing her at least seven times.

"This was not a terrorist incident. This was a terrible murder carried out by a mentally ill person," the prosecutor said, explaining why a life prison sentence had not been sought, according to a court transcript.

Tamimi's lawyer said the defendant attacked Bladon in a rage at his sons insisting that he stay in a mental institution rather than with them.

"This drove him to stab a person to death so that he would be shot dead," the lawyer said.

In the April 14, 2017 incident, Tamimi was overpowered and arrested.

Bladon's relatives said the sentence was too lenient.

"For the family, it makes no difference whether this was a terrorist attack or just another crazed murderer," the family's representative, Israeli lawyer Maurice Hirsch, said.

"They are outraged by the leniency of the sentence. They expected that Hannah's murderer would spend the rest of his life behind bars."

The court transcript quoted Tamimi as saying after sentencing: "I'm sorry. I wish I could take her [Bladon's] place. I did not mean to murder her. I don't know how it happened."

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The Kindertransport was an organized evacuation of nearly 10,000 predominately Jewish children from Germany, Austria, Czechoslovakia and Poland to the United Kingdom in the nine months before the outbreak of the Second World War.

Prince Charles, who celebrated his 70th birthday last week, drank tea and listened to stories from Jewish refugees who had arrived in the U.K. on the Kindertransport.

Renate Collins, who arrived from Prague, said, "My mother put me on the train and that was it, I never saw her again, and I lost 64 members of my family in the Holocaust. I was adopted in Wales and apart from losing all the family, I've had a good life."

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In May, U.S. President Donald Trump abandoned the deal, negotiated with five other world powers during Democratic President Barack Obama's administration, and earlier this month the United States restored sanctions targeting Iran's oil, banking and transportation sectors.

Hunt's office said he would meet Iranian Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif and would stress that the U.K. is committed to the nuclear deal as long as Iran sticks to its terms. He will also discuss European efforts to maintain nuclear-related sanctions relief.

"The Iran nuclear deal remains a vital component of stability in the Middle East by eliminating the threat of a nuclearized Iran. It needs 100% compliance, though, to survive," Hunt said in a statement ahead of the visit.

"We will stick to our side of the bargain as long as Iran does. But we also need to see an end to destabilizing activity by Iran in the rest of the region if we are going to tackle the root causes of the challenges the region faces."

Hunt will also discuss Iran's role in the conflicts in Syria and Yemen, his office said, and press Iran on its human rights record, calling for the immediate release of detained British-Iranian dual nationals where there are humanitarian grounds to do so.

"I arrive in Iran with a clear message for the country's leaders: putting innocent people in prison cannot and must not be used as a tool of diplomatic leverage," he said.

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The Daily Mail published the video on Thursday. It shows Corbyn at the conference, which had been promoted online by the Izzedine al-Qassam Brigades, the military wing of Hamas, the terrorist group that rules the Gaza Strip, where he was discussing a speech given by Palestinian Authority Ambassador to the U.K. Manuel Hassassian.

Corbyn said Hassassian had made a "powerful, passionate, effective speech" in Parliament about "this history of Palestine [and] the rights of the Palestinian people." He said the "thankfully silent Zionists" in the audience had "dutifully recorded" Hassassian's speech, and had confronted him once it was over.

"They [Zionists] clearly have two problems. One is that they don't want to study history, and secondly, having lived in this country [the U.K.] for a very long time, probably all their lives, they don't understand English irony either," Corbyn said.

"I think they need two lessons, which we can perhaps help them with."

Corbyn shared a stage at the conference with Alan Hart, known for his conspiracy theories about the Sept. 11, 2001 attacks on the World Trade Center, who in his own speech described Zionism as "a cancer at the heart of international affairs," and former deputy head of the Muslim Council of Britain Daud Abdullah, who put his name to a letter saying the British Royal Navy should be attacked if it tried to keep weapons from being smuggled into the Gaza Strip.

Another speaker was Rev. Stephen Sizer, who in 2015 was banned from social media outlets for blaming Israel for the 9/11 attacks and was even banned by the Church of England authorities for his "anti-Semitic ideas."

Corbyn wrote a letter defending Sizer, saying Sizer had been victimized for daring to "speak out against Zionism" and was "under attack by certain individuals intent on discrediting the excellent work that Stephen does in highlighting the injustices of the Palestinian Israeli situation."

Editor of the Jewish Chronicle newspaper Stephen Pollard said that the footage of Corbyn's speech in the Daily Mail "shows the reality of what [he] thinks of Jews, as somehow a breed apart."

Pollard said Corbyn uses the term "Zionists" as code for "Jews."

Corbyn consistently denies allegations that he is anti-Semitic but has been the subject of much controversy in recent weeks amid a focus on the Labour Party's failure to address rising anti-Semitism among its members. Recent reports have shown him laying a wreath at a memorial to the Black September terrorists who murdered 11 Israeli athletes at the 1972 Munich Olympics and attending the wedding of a known Holocaust denier.

In late July, three Jewish newspapers in the U.K. ran a joint editorial calling Corbyn "an existential threat to Jewish life in this country." The editorial, which ran in the Jewish Chronicle, the Jewish News, and Jewish Telegraph, said that since Corbyn's election as Labour leader in 2015, the party had grown increasingly tolerant of anti-Semitism.

"The party that was, until recently, the natural home for our community has seen its values and integrity eroded by Corbynite contempt for Jews and Israel," the editorial said.

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