Secretary of State Mike Pompeo has said the US is imposing the "strongest sanctions in history" on Iran. In a speech in Washington, America's top diplomat said Iran would be "battling to keep its economy alive" after the sanctions took effect. He said he would work closely with the Pentagon and regional allies "to deter any Iranian aggression".

Donald Trump's national security advisor refused on Sunday to say whether the United States would punish European companies that do not cease their business operations in Iran by the end of this year. Companies within affected industries between 90 days and six months to wind down operations in Iran or run the risk of facing stiff penalties now that the United States is no longer a party to an international accord that lifted sanctions on Tehran.

As reactions to the United States’ decision to withdraw from the Iran nuclear deal continue to reverberate globally, NATO member Turkey has made its displeasure clear. Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan told his Iranian counterpart Hassan Rouhani that Washington’s move was “wrong.” In a telephone conversation held Thursday, the two leaders reportedly discussed the potential effects of the deal and Erdogan said he favored the preservation of the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA) that was signed in 2015 between Iran and the five permanent members of the United Nations Security Council plus Germany.

In the days and hours leading up to U.S. President Donald Trump’s announcement that the U.S. will withdraw from the Iran nuclear agreement, Israel was preparing for war in the Golan Heights. Urging all residents in and around the mountainous, border region to prepare bomb shelters, Israeli forces moved in rocket launcher systems capable of striking ground targets with high precision up to 70 km away. Then, mere hours after Trump signed the executive memorandum detailing the U.S. withdrawal, Israel began striking targets inside Syria with jets.

The Latest on President Donald Trump’s decision on the Iran nuclear deal (all times local): - 12:15 a.m. - Add Australia and Japan to the nations expressing continued support for the multinational nuclear deal with Iran even though the U.S. is pulling out of it. Australian Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull said Wednesday that he regrets President Donald Trump’s decision to withdraw from the landmark pact. Turnbull is urging all parties involved in the pact to show restraint.

President Trump declared on Tuesday that he was pulling out of the Iran nuclear deal, unraveling the signature foreign policy achievement of his predecessor, Barack Obama, and isolating the United States among its Western allies.

Iran has warned the US it will suffer "historic remorse" if it pulls out of a nuclear agreement with Tehran. Donald Trump has threatened to abandon the agreement when it comes up for renewal on 12 May and has demanded European allies "fix the flaws" or he will bring back sanctions against Iran. But in a speech broadcast live on state television, Iranian President Hassan Rouhani warned Washington and world powers would regret such a move "like never before".

Aides to Donald Trump, the US president, hired an Israeli private intelligence agency to orchestrate a “dirty ops” campaign against key individuals from the Obama administration who helped negotiate the Iran nuclear deal, the Observer can reveal. People in the Trump camp contacted private investigators in May last year to “get dirt” on Ben Rhodes, who had been one of Barack Obama’s top national security advisers, and Colin Kahl, deputy assistant to Obama, as part of an elaborate attempt to discredit the deal.

Israeli agency told to find incriminating material on Obama diplomats who negotiated deal with Tehran

A one-letter mistake on an official White House statement led to consternation and questions about official US policy toward Iran on Monday, and a quiet correction did little to quell the matter. In the written statement sent to reporters around 7:30 p.m. ET, White House press secretary Sarah Sanders declared that newly unveiled Israeli intelligence proved "Iran has a robust, clandestine nuclear weapons program."

Netanyahu presents massive archive obtained by Israel in ‘great intelligence achievement’ which he says proves Tehran has for years been developing the bomb, despite ‘terrible agreement' ‘based on lies’; says he’s sure President Trump will ‘do the right thing’ on its fate. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu revealed Monday evening what he said was “conclusive proof” of a secret project underway in Iran for the development of a nuclear weapon—evidence that he said proved that Tehran had lied “big time” to the international community.

The head of the Iranian army on Saturday said Iranian forces were working to “annihilate” Israel and predicted they would achieve success within 25 years. The threats from the Commander of Iran’s Army Major General Abdolrahim Mousavi come amid almost daily warnings of conflict from Tehran and Jerusalem, heightened by an alleged Israeli strike on an Iranian base in Syria earlier in the month. “When the arrogant powers create a sanctuary for the Zionist regime to continue survival...

Hackers have attacked networks in a number of countries including data centers in Iran where they left the image of a U.S. flag on screens along with a warning: “Don’t mess with our elections”, the Iranian IT ministry said on Saturday.

That is, they "stole" things like "academic journals, theses, dissertations, and electronic books" -- you know, the stuff that professors routinely publish as part of their work.

The United States on Friday charged nine Iranians and an Iranian company with attempting to hack into hundreds of U.S. and international universities, dozens of companies and parts of the U.S. government on behalf of the Tehran government.

The next leader of Saudi Arabia said if Iran were to develop a nuclear bomb, his country would obtain one as well. “Saudi Arabia does not want to acquire any nuclear bomb, but without a doubt if Iran developed a nuclear bomb, we will follow suit as soon as possible,” Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman told CBS in a “60 Minutes” interview set to air Sunday. The crown prince also compared the Supreme Leader of Iran Ayatollah Khamenei to Hitler, saying he wants to “expand” and “create his own project in the Middle East.”

A Tehran prosecutor says a woman who removed her obligatory Islamic headscarf in public in late December has been sentenced to 24 months in prison. Iran’s semi-official Tasnim news agency on Wednesday quoted prosecutor Abbas Jafari Dolatabadi as saying the unidentified woman took off her headscarf in Tehran’s Enghelab Street to “encourage corruption through the removal of the hijab in public.”

The only beneficiaries of the administration’s ineptitude to date have been Iran, Assad, and Russia.

The woman became the face of protests in Iran after defiantly showing her hair last year.

During a protest in Iran, a young woman jumped up on a telephone box and slowly and deliberately took off her white head dress, her hijab. Tying the hajib to a black stick, she waved it like a flag. This was a massive move of defiance against a regime that has, since 1979, required all women to cover their hair.