[3] Since then, both countries have been involved in numerous direct confrontations, diplomatic incidents, and proxy wars throughout the Middle East, which has caused the tense nature of the relationship between the two to be called an 'international crisis'.
He added that "DOD [Department of Defense] personnel or contractors are not authorized to provide assistance to any other private company, including its employees or agents, seeking to develop oil resources in northeastern Syria."
[61] On 30 March, the Pentagon revealed that twelve American were wounded in total with six U.S. troops in Syria suffering traumatic brain injuries due to the two attacks by Iran-backed militias.
[69][70] In contrast, the spokesman of the Chinese Ministry of National Defense, Senior Colonel Wu Qian claimed the exercise was a normal military exchange unconnected to the international tensions.
[69] The same day, K-1 Air Base in Iraq's Kirkuk Governorate was attacked with Katyusha rockets, injuring several Iraqi Security Forces personnel, four U.S. soldiers, and killing a U.S. civilian military contractor.
On 2 January, U.S. Defense Secretary Mark Esper said "the game has changed" and stated that the U.S. would preemptively strike Iranian-backed paramilitary groups in Iraq if there were indications they were preparing to attack U.S. forces, while also urging the Iraqi government to resist Iranian influence.
[89] President Trump defended the move, claiming in an interview with The Ingraham Angle on the Fox News Channel that Soleimani was planning further attacks against four U.S. Embassies across the Middle East.
[90][91] This was later challenged by U.S. Defense Secretary Mark Esper in interviews on Face the Nation on CBS and State of the Union on CNN, who claimed that President Trump was not embellishing that there was an Iranian threat but that he had seen no evidence that U.S. embassies were to be targeted.
[92] On the same day of the Baghdad airport strike, an IRGC financier and key commander, Abdulreza Shahlai,[a] was unsuccessfully targeted by U.S. drones in Yemen,[94] which killed Mohammad Mirza, a Quds Force operative, instead.
[112] Al-Manar reported that "in an extraordinary session on Sunday (5 January), 170 Iraqi lawmakers signed a draft law requiring the government to request the withdrawal of U.S. troops from Iraq.
[136] Foreign ministers from the countries who lost citizens in the crash—Canada, Ukraine, Sweden, Afghanistan, and the United Kingdom—met at the Canadian High Commission in London and demanded that Iran provide compensation for families of the victims.
[139][140] On 10 January, Acting Prime Minister Adil Abdul-Mahdi called Secretary of State Pompeo demanding that the U.S. send a delegation "to prepare a mechanism to carry out the parliament's resolution regarding the withdrawal of foreign troops from Iraq".
[153] During his televised sermon, Khamenei lamented the shootdown of the Ukrainian airliner, sought to present the image that the country was unified despite protests and the international crisis, and lashed out at the UK, France, and Germany, referring to them as "servants" of the "villainous" United States.
[156] On 18 January, the U.S. sanctioned Brigadier General Hassan Shahvarpour, an IRGC commander in Khuzestan Province, after security personnel fired into protesters without warning during anti-government demonstrations in Mahshahr County.
According to investigative journalist Alan Friedman, Haig was "upset at the fact that the decision had been made at the White House, even though the State Department was responsible for the list."
"Pursuant to this Directive, Thomas Twetten arrived in Baghdad on July 27 to share CIA satellite imagery on Iranian troop movements with the Iraqi Mukhabarat.
Iran's parliament passed a bill on 27 December 2006 obliging the government to "revise" its cooperation with the International Atomic Energy Agency and to accelerate its drive to master nuclear technology in a reaction to the U.N. resolution.
The bill gave President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's government a free hand to adopt a tougher line against the IAEA, including ending its inspections of Iran's atomic facilities.
Iran, which denied falling behind in payments, was furious, convinced Russia was pressuring the country to bend to the U.N. Security Council, which has placed sanctions against it for refusing to suspend uranium enrichment.
[196] On March 18, 2007, Iran, under fire from Western powers over its atomic program, criticized Britain's plans to renew its nuclear arsenal as a "serious setback" to international disarmament efforts.
[197] In a Question and Answer session following his address to Columbia University on September 24, 2007, the Iranian President remarked: "I think the politicians who are after atomic bombs, or testing them, making them, politically they are backward, retarded.
[202] A call for Israel's destruction is also attributed to Ayatollah Khomeini, the political leader of the 1979 Islamic Revolution.,[203] and Iranian military parades featured ballistic missiles adorned with slogans such as 'Israel must be uprooted and erased from history'.
In June 2007 leading EU countries including Britain, France and Germany cautioned Iran that it faces further sanctions for expanding uranium enrichment and curbing U.N. inspectors' access to its nuclear program.
[citation needed] Starting in 2005, several analysts, including journalist Seymour Hersh,[277] former UN weapons of mass destruction inspector in Iraq from 1991 to 1998, Scott Ritter,[278] Joseph Cirincione, director for non-proliferation at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace,[279] Professor at the University of San Francisco and Middle East editor for the Foreign Policy in Focus Project, Stephen Zunes[280] claimed that the United States planned a military attack against Iran.
CBS News national security correspondent David Martin says the U.S. military build-up, which would include adding a second aircraft carrier to the one already in the Gulf, is being proposed as a response to what U.S. officials view as an increasingly provocative Iranian leadership.
[281] Dec 22, 2006: US Defense Secretary Robert Gates said that an increased US naval presence in the Persian Gulf is not a response to any action by Iran but a message that the United States will keep and maintain its regional footprint "for a long time."
In Tehran, Iran's Foreign Ministry spokesman Mohammad Ali Hosseini told a news conference that the newspaper report "will make clear to the world public opinion that the Zionist regime is the main menace to global peace and the region."
[285] Jan 14, 2007: A former Russian Black Sea Fleet Commander, Admiral Edward Baltin, says he believes the presence of so many US nuclear submarines in the Persian Gulf meant a strike was likely.
[286] Jan 24, 2007: Iranian officials said Wednesday that they had received a delivery of advanced Russian air defense systems that are designed to protect its nuclear facilities at Isfahan, Bushehr, Tehran, and eastern Iran from attack, primarily from Israeli or American aircraft.
Beginning in early 2005, journalists, activists, and academics such as Seymour Hersh, Scott Ritter, Joseph Cirincione, and Jorge E. Hirsch began publishing claims that American concerns over the alleged threat posed by Iran's nuclear program might lead the US government to take military action against that country in the future.