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Already, on both sides of the Atlantic, calls are growing for the administration to consider a significant rethink, particularly when it comes to Iran

critics say that the U.S. restrictions have chilled even permitted trade with Iran and scared away foreign entities from taking the risk.

it is clear that the Iranian health-care system is being deprived of equipment necessary to save lives and prevent wider infection.”

“Just because Iran has managed the crisis badly, that does not make its humanitarian needs and our security ones any the less. Targeted sanctions relief would be both morally right and serve the health and security interests of the United States, Europe, and the rest of the world.”

The sanctions Trump reimposed on Iran as part of his gambit to smash the 2015 nuclear deal had already crippled the Iranian economy and appear to have enfeebled its public health capacity at a dire time of need.

, it would be in keeping with the Trump administration’s stated support for the Iranian people. Doctors and nurses are “key pillars of Iranian civil society,” independent of the theocratic regime, he said, adding that “what we’re describing in this statement is ultimately a demand for the Trump administration to live up to its own rhetoric.”

In Venezuela, the United States has stepped up its pressure on Maduro, indicting him and some of his close associates on narcoterrorism charges

The country’s health-care system is broken, while difficult conditions abroad in the shadow of the pandemic have forced thousands of Venezuelan refugees to start making the forlorn trek back to their ruined homeland.

“The U.S. should be helping Venezuela and other countries to contain this devastating pandemic.”

“He is irreplaceable and indispensable” to Iran’s military establishment.

The killing of General Suleimani was a major blow for Iran and a major escalation of President Trump’s “maximum pressure” campaign against Iran, which began with economic sanctions but has steadily moved into the military arena.

The Americans responded by bombing three sites of the Khataib Hezbollah militia near Qaim in western Iraq and two sites in Syria. Khataib Hezbollah denied involvement in the attack in Kirkuk.

Pro-Iranian militia members then marched on the American Embassy on Tuesday, effectively imprisoning its diplomats inside for more than 24 hours while thousands of militia members thronged outside. They burned the embassy’s reception area, planted militia flags on its roof and scrawled graffiti on its walls.

President Trump said on Tuesday that Iran would “be held fully responsible” for the attack on the embassy, in which protesters set fire to a reception building on the embassy compound, which covers more than 100 acres. He also blamed Tehran for directing the unrest.

General Suleimani led the Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps’ Quds Force, a special forces unit responsible for Iranian operations outside Iran’s borders. He once described himself to a senior Iraqi intelligence official as the “sole authority for Iranian actions in Iraq,” the official later told American officials in Baghdad.In his speech denouncing Mr. Trump, he was even less discreet — and openly mocking.“We are near you, where you can’t even imagine,” he said. “We are ready. We are the man of this arena.”

"In these uncertain times, it is more important than ever for all parties to remain calm and exercise maximum restraint in order to avoid escalation which cannot be in anyone's interest,"

“We do not seek conflict,” General McKenzie said, “but we must remain postured and committed to respond to any contingency.”

on Thursday, a senior military official said American intelligence analysts had detected “planning going on” — including preparations for possible rocket strikes or worse — by Iran and Shia militias in Iraq that it supports.

“In short, Iran is using Iraq as its proxy battleground against the United States, with Iran’s ultimate objective being to eject the United States and our forces from Iraq and the broader Middle East,” General McKenzie said

The senior military official, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to describe operations and intelligence assessments, did not cite any specific evidence of a larger, imminent attack against American personnel. But the official said military analysts assessed that the likelihood of Iran or its proxies miscalculating the risks of such a strike were higher than usual.

More recently, a top Iranian scientist, Mohsen Fakhrizadeh, was killed east of Tehran, in a daytime strike widely believed to have been carried out by Israeli operatives

Iran responded this month by enacting a law ordering an immediate ramping up of its enrichment of uranium to levels closer to weapons-grade fuel.

“The Iranians don’t want to go to war with us,” Admiral McRaven continued. “We don’t want to go to war with Iran. So everybody needs to do the best they can to kind of lower the temperature and try not to get this into an escalation mode.”

Despite Iranian budgetary woes, the Islamic Republic has somehow managed to find the funding to up the financial assistance it provides to its Lebanese puppet organization, Hezbollah.

the Iranian regime also funds the Palestinian Islamic Jihad (PIJ) terrorist organization which operates out of Gaza.

the Iranians are supposed to give the Palestinian terror group $70 million – supposedly enough money to enable the terror group to get stronger and effectively oppose Hamas.

Zanjani's wealth has been estimated at $14 billion, The Associated Press reports, and Iran's Oil Ministry says the businessman owes more than $2.25 billion for oil sales he made on behalf of the Iranian government.

“Iran has undertaken significant steps that many people — and I do mean many — doubted would ever come to pass,” Secretary of State John Kerry said Saturday evening at the headquarters of the International Atomic Energy Agency, which earlier issued a report detailing how Iran had shipped 98 percent of its fuel to Russia, dismantled more than 12,000 centrifuges so they could not enrich uranium, and poured cement into the core of a reactor designed to produce plutonium.

The release of the “unjustly detained” Americans, as Mr. Kerry put it, came at some cost: Seven Iranians, either convicted or charged with breaking American embargoes, were released in the prisoner swap, and 14 others were removed from international wanted lists.

They particularly object to the release of about $100 billion in frozen assets — mostly from past oil sales — that Iran will now control, and the end of American and European restrictions on trade that had been imposed as part of the American-led effort to stop the program.

In Tehran and Washington, political battles are still being fought over the merits and dangers of moving toward normal interchanges between two countries that have been avowed adversaries for more than three decades.

But Mr. Kerry suggested that the nuclear deal had broken the cycle of hostility, enabling the secret negotiations that led up to the hostage swap.

“Critics will continue to attack the deal for giving away too much to Tehran,” said R. Nicholas Burns, who started the sanctions against Iran that were lifted Saturday as the No. 3 official in the State Department during the George W. Bush administration.

A copy of the proposed sanction leaked three weeks ago, and the Obama administration pulled it back — perhaps to avoid torpedoing the prisoner swap and the completion of the nuclear deal. Negotiations to win the release of Mr. Rezaian, who had covered the nuclear talks before he was imprisoned on vague charges, were an open secret: Mr. Kerry often alluded to the fact that he was working on the issue behind the scenes.

Then, several weeks ago the Iranians leaked news that they were interested in a swap of their own citizens, which American officials said was an outrageous demand, because they had been indicted or convicted in a truly independent court system.

The result was two parallel races underway — one involving implementing the nuclear deal, the other to get the prisoner swap done while the moment was ripe.

For example, the United States and Iran were struggling late Saturday to define details of what kind of “advanced centrifuges” Iran will be able to develop nearly a decade from now — the kind of definitional difference that can undermine an accord.

The result was that Mr. Kerry and Mr. Zarif veered from the monumental significance of what they were accomplishing — an end to a decade of open hostility — to the minutiae of uranium enrichment.

But Iran has something it desperately needs: Billions in cash, at a time oil shipments have been cut by more than half because of the sanctions, and below $30-a-barrel prices mean huge cuts in national revenue.

senior American official said Saturday that Iran will be able to access about $50 billion of a reported $100 billion in holdings abroad, though others have used higher estimates. The official said Iran will likely need to keep much of those assets abroad to facilitate international trade.

The Obama administration on Saturday also removed 400 Iranians and others from its sanctions list and took other steps to lift selected restrictions on interactions with Iran

Under the new rules put in place, the United States will no longer sanction foreign individuals or firms for buying oil and gas from Iran. The American trade embargo remains in place, but the government will permit certain limited business activities with Iran, such as selling or purchasing Iranian food and carpets and American commercial aircraft and parts.

It is unclear what will happen after the passing of Iran’s Supreme Leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, who has protected and often fueled the hardliners — but permitted these talks to go ahead.

Zarif and Kerry continued to meet, while Brett McGurk, head of the State Department's counter-Islamic State coalition, ran a separate diplomatic track with different Iranian officials as part of the effort to keep the prisoner negotiations separate from the then-ongoing nuclear talks.

Ultimately, the two countries agreed on seven Iranians: three who were serving prison time and four who were awaiting trial. All seven were facing charges related to violations of nuclear sanctions -- which were lifted on Saturday. “So there was a symmetry here,” Kerry said.

Kerry credits the nuclear deal with showing that Iran and the U.S., despite having no formal diplomatic ties, can work together to resolve issues peacefully.

The deal leaves American citizen Siamak Namazi, who was arrested in October, in prison. And it doesn’t provide answers about Robert Levinson, the American CIA contractor who disappeared in 2007.

Kerry sees the prisoner deal as a positive precedent for Levinson's and Namazi's cases.

Critics of the prisoner agreement, namely Republican lawmakers and presidential candidates, argue that any type of swap or exchange is unjust.

According to Kerry, Zarif suggested that there was room for the two countries to work cooperatively on other issues, including in Yemen and Syria, where the U.S. and Iran are effectively fighting on opposite sides of proxy wars.

We can confirm that our detained U.S. citizens have been released and that those who wished to depart Iran have left

The nuclear agreement "accelerated" the prisoner swap

were released, along with four other Iranians held in other parts of the U.S., Mechanich's attorney

concluded Tehran was in compliance with the deal governing its nuclear program.

U.S. federal officials said they will not comment on the names of anyone who is part of the agreement until after the four Americans are in U.S. custody

seven Iranian men walked free from detention in the United States after being pardoned and released

he freed prisoners are expected to be transported to a U.S. military hospital in Germany for medical evaluation

Iranian officials to "continue cooperating with the United States to determine the whereabouts of Robert Levinson,

FBI agent and CIA contractor, went missing in Iran in 2007.

men had been involved in exporting products and services to Iran in violation of trade sanctions against the country.

agreed to drop charges against 14 other Iranians whose extradition to the United States seemed unlikely

Three Americans freed in a prisoner swap with Iran arrived in Germany on Sunday evening after a brief stop in Switzerland, two White House officials said.

The fourth prisoner released in the swap, identified by U.S. officials as Nosratollah Khosravi-Roodsari, decided not to leave Iran, senior White House officials said. "It's his free determination" whether he wants to stay in Iran, one official said. "We don't make that judgment."

Since the Iranian revolution in 1979, women have been forced to cover their hair according to Islamic law on modesty.

As the conflict devolves further, events are almost certain to spin out of the Kremlin’s control. After the Deir ez-Zor attack, the newspaper Kommersant cited a source saying that the Russian command group in Damascus had not authorized this “dangerous initiative.” This could just be a case of retrospective amnesia. But if true, it illustrates the dangers of messy, multi-player conflicts, in which an imperial power must deal with the fallout when its notional clients and proxies take the initiative. When this extends to picking fights with U.S.-backed forces and potentially even threatening U.S. personnel, it’s a dangerous matter. The odds of this escalating into an outright confrontation remain low, but the risk that Moscow might be forced to back down to avoid one is much greater.

first sign something could be wrong came in the May 2017 presidential election.

There are several reasons Iran’s economy hasn’t taken off in the way Rouhani had promised.

But perhaps more important than the uncertainty over the agreement are Iran’s own demographics. Half of all Iranians are under the age of 30. More people are entering the workforce each year than jobs exist or are being created. This all but ensures that a country with near universal literacy—with no gender disparity—will continue to have double-digit unemployment for the foreseeable future.

The protests were able to spread because of, among other things, the penetration of the smartphone—more than 40 percent of Iranian households have access to at least one—which enabled Iranians to use messaging apps to spread the word about the demonstrations.

Ultimately this might have been what prevented them from getting bigger.

This is ultimately what could imperil the Iranian regime. Rouhani’s economic promises have yet to materialize.

“The Islamic Republic,” Takeyh warned, “is entering a period of prolonged transition where it will no longer be able to proffer a theocracy with a human face.”

The relationship between these three countries is unusual to say the least. Iran and Israel are sworn enemies. And Syria is fast becoming the most dangerous front in their bitter rivalry.

Now though it is becoming clearer that the attack could change the regional dynamics even further. And developments on the southern Golan Heights could provide additional impetus.

A weak and fragmented Syria would do little to constrain Israel. While the latter sees Iran and its potential quest for an atomic bomb as an existential threat, Iran itself sees Israel's long-range military power as a considerable threat and an obstacle to its regional ambitions.

The Assad regime's growing victories saw a variety of pro-Iranian forces establishing themselves in Syria, from units of the Revolutionary Guard Corps to a variety of militias - a kind of Shia foreign legion, recruited in Pakistan, Afghanistan and elsewhere.

Russian President Vladimir Putin has called for all foreign forces to be withdrawn from Syria; a demand echoed just a few days ago by his foreign minister, Sergei Lavrov, who said that only Syrian forces should be deployed in the south of the country.

Moscow clearly wants to stabilise the situation in Syria enabling the Assad regime to "declare victory".

Videos posted on social media Wednesday showed thick smoke circulating in the southern areas of the Iranian capital.

Iran's semi-official Tasnim news agency said all operations had been suspended at the facility, known as the Tondgooyan refinery, Reuters reported.Some 18 tankers of the refinery caught fire on Wednesday, according to state-run Young Journalists Club (YJC) agency.

This incident came just hours after one of the largest vessels in the Iranian navy caught fire and sank in the Gulf of Oman on Wednesday.

Saudi-backed forces have since regained control of Aden and talks are under way to end the power struggle over the city, news agencies report.

US lawmakers have reacted with outrage to CNN's new findings. One of them, Senator Elizabeth Warren, a frontrunner to become the Democratic Party's presidential candidate in 2020, said: "One report of US military equipment ending up in the hands of our enemies is troubling. Two reports is deeply disturbing."

It, like several other pieces of weaponry that CNN identified, can be traced back to a $2.5 billion arms sale contract between the US and the UAE in 2014. Like all arms deals, this contract was bound by an end user agreement which certifies the recipient -- in this case the UAE -- as the final user of the weaponry. From this evidence, it is clear that this agreement has been broken.

When asked whether it knew if its technology was ending up in the wrong hands in Yemen, Real Time Laboratories told CNN they had supplied the product to BAE Systems in 2010 under a US government subcontract, but "cannot comment on what the US Government may have eventually done with this vehicle."

One of the most prominent is a group known as Alwiyat al Amalqa or "Giants Brigade" -- a predominantly Salafi, or ultra-conservative Sunni -- militia supported by the UAE. One of their videos shows a US-made MaxxPro MRAP vehicle, purportedly being driven in convoy to join the separatists' battle against government forces in the south.

Not only is US weaponry being used directly against America's allies in Yemen, but its presence also plays into Iranian propaganda in the region. The latest example of this saw footage being broadcast on a pro-Iranian Lebanese channel that showed US-made armored vehicles being unloaded into a Yemeni port off UAE ships. It turned out this footage was not recent, but the broadcast indicates the presence of US hardware in Yemen continues to be a card played by America's enemies.

With the conflict spiraling and the role of US weapons in its deterioration becoming clearer, all while the humanitarian crisis deepens by the day, the Pentagon has pledged to investigate how its military hardware ended up in the wrong hands.

Senator Chris Murphy authored an amendment to the annual US defense spending bill, which is currently being debated in Washington, that would cut off support for the Saudi-led coalition until the Secretary of Defense could certify that both the Saudis and Emiratis have stopped transferring US weapons to third parties in Yemen. It's just one of recent bipartisan efforts in the US Congress to address US military involvement in Yemen.

Sen. Murphy responded to CNN's latest findings, saying: "For years, US-made weapons have been fueling the conflict in Yemen and it's no surprise they are now ending up in the hands of private militias."

A UN-commissioned panel of experts recommended that the US, UK and France "refrain from providing arms to parties to the conflict" because of "the prevailing risk that such arms will be used by parties to commit or facilitate serious violations of international humanitarian and human rights law."

Mixed signals, she said, make any effort to shape an adversary’s behavior “incredibly ineffective.”

This imposes a layer of confusion on the conflict, just as it enters a dangerous and volatile new chapter, inviting mixed messages and misread intentions.

It’s not that experts or foreign officials suspect a secret agenda, but that the administration’s action fit no clear pattern or long-term strategy, she said. “It just doesn’t add up.”

Without a clear understanding of what actions will lead the United States to ramp up or ramp down hostilities, she said, Iranian leaders are operating in the dark — and waiting to stumble past some unseen red line.“That’s what makes this a dangerous situation,” she said.

He has cycled between ambitions of withdrawing from the Middle East, positioning himself as a once-in-a-generation peacemaker and, more recently, promising to oppose Iran more forcefully than any recent president has.

He took the United States out of the nuclear agreement and imposed sanctions against Iran — which some see as setting off a crisis that continues today

Without a clear explanation for Mr. Trump’s behavior, anyone whose job requires forecasting the next American action — from foreign head of state to think tank analyst — was left guessing.

United States diplomacy has emphasized calls for peace but has conspicuously declined to offer what diplomats call “offramps” — easy, low-stakes opportunities for both sides to begin de-escalating, which are considered essential first steps.

has Trump considered next 15 moves on chessboard? How to protect our people? Line up allies to support us? Contain Iran but avoid wider war? My guess is he hasn’t.”

Ms. Geranmayeh stressed that the conflict between the United States and Iran also threatens to draw in a host of Middle Eastern and European countries.To navigate tensions and avoid worsening them, allies and adversaries alike must astutely judge American intentions and anticipate American actions.

Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates had already been ramping down tensions with Iran, Ms. Geranmayeh said, “because they have no idea how Trump will behave from one week to the next” and fear getting caught in the middle.

“If Trump is not managing a consistent and clear message to the Iranians about what he wants,” she said, “then this opens up a lot of space for a lot of miscalculation.”

Ms. Kaye said Iran might conclude that it should tread with extreme caution. Or it might reason that the United States poses a threat that is both existential and unyielding, compelling Tehran to gamble on taking extreme measures.

Though the Iraqi debate that called for the US exit is not binding, and would require a one-year notice period, the fact that the move was led by a prime minister regarded as a US ally showed just how divisive the killing has become, and how quickly US interests in the region could unravel as a result.

Shortly after Abdul Mahdi’s statement, the US announced that it was suspending operations against the Islamic State (Isis) in Iraq and a five-year-old training mission to equip local forces. A US statement claimed the suspension was a reaction to rocket attacks on US bases, carried out in recent weeks by Shia militia members.

Suleimani was the second most powerful person in Iran and the most influential Iranian outside the country, travelling the region like a Persian viceroy as he directed conflicts in Iraq, Syria and Lebanon, and as far away as Yemen. The extraordinary scenes of mourners thronging Iranian cities were a powerful testament to his popularity at home and the anger directed at the US for his killing a figure so central to Iran’s presence on the regional stage.

“The US army has killed these people,” Nasrallah said, referring to Abu Mahdi al-Muhandis, an ally of Suleimani also hit in the airstrike in Baghdad in the early hours of Friday. “We do not at all mean the American people and citizens across our region … It is up to anyone from the axis of resistance to deliver a fair punishment after Soleimani’s assassination.”

Withdrawing US forces from Iraq would be damaging to Washington’s interests in a region still recovering from the invasion of Iraq 17 years ago and the rampage of Isis, which forced millions of people from their homes and led to widespread destruction across the country. While Isis has been defeated on the battlefields of Iraq and Syria, it remains a residual insurgent threat and there are growing signs that the terror group is reorganising, despite being on its knees in its former heartland.

In Iraq’s parliament, the resolution urging a US exit was passed by 170 votes to nil.

President Donald Trump has announced a new raft of sanctions against Iran. He said in his address Wednesday that, "the US will immediately impose additional punishing economic sanctions ... these powerful sanctions will remain until Iran changes its behavior. In recent months alone, Iran has seized ships in international waters, fired an unprovoked strike on Saudi Arabia and shot down two American drones."

What message does that send to America's Gulf allies, like the United Arab Emirates and Saudi Arabia who depend on the US's military umbrella? As a precaution, they are dialing down their hostility and dialing up their diplomatic overtures to Iran.

While America's allies -- and even its adversaries -- caution against starting another war in the Middle East, it is difficult to see where the opening for discussion, negotiation and a diplomatic solution is right now.

Whatever the administration's goal, the millions pouring onto the streets of Iran for four straight days of national mourning this week in the wake of Soleimani's killing, have demonstrated what Iranian Vice President for Women and Family Affairs Massoumeh Ebtekar told me: "This is a very clear indication of the response of the Iranian nation and the fact that the presence of the people, the huge crowds are staggering."And even for us -- we've been taking part in many of these marches and demonstrations from the beginning of the revolution -- this is something else. From one city to another city, it is a resurrection," she said."It's a revival of the Islamic Revolution," she added. "It's a revival of the Iranian nation."

Ayatollah Khamenei, 80, addressed the nation from the Mosalla mosque in the capital. The last time he did so was in 2012 on the 33rd anniversary of the country's Islamic Revolution.

He delivered part of his address in Arabic, calling on the Arab and Islamic world to drive the US out of the region. "The biggest punishment for the United States is its expulsion," he said.

Speaking on behalf of the group, he said on Thursday: "We are here to pursue closure, accountability, transparency and justice for the victims - Ukrainian, Swedish, Afghan, British, Canadian as well as Iranian, through a full, complete and transparent international investigation."