However, to secure the release of American hostages, several senior Reagan administration officials secretly facilitated the sale of arms to Iran in the 1980s in a scandal called the Iran–Contra affair.
[5] In March 2007, UN Security Council Resolution 1747 tightened the sanctions imposed on Iran in connection with the Iranian nuclear program.
In September 2020, US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo announced the imposition of an arms embargo on the Iranian Ministry of Defence and Armed Forces Logistics and other entities involved in Iran's nuclear program, including the government of the disputed Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro for providing weapons to Iran.
[11] However the United States and Germany as the major suppliers of Israel's arms imports keep supplying lethal weapons in spite of growing criticism of the mounting civilian casualties.
[9][10] The United States and the European Union stopped exporting arms to China after 1989 after the violent suppression of protests in Tiananmen Square.
[16][better source needed] That notably deprived Navy SEALs of the Carl Gustav m/45 submachine gun, which resulted in the creation of the Smith & Wesson M76.