The already tense relationship between the United States and Iran deteriorated further after Iran's top military commander Qasem Soleimani was killed in the US targeted attack on the Baghdadi international airport in early January. Iran retaliated with airstrikes on the US military facilities in Iraq, Eurasia Diary reports citing Sputnik.

US President Donald Trump has said the United States will not remove sanctions on Iran in exchange for Tehran's readiness to negotiate, in what was a repeat of his earlier Tweet, but this time in Farsi.

وزیر امور خارجه ایران می گوید ایران خواستار مذاکره با ایالات متحده است اما می خواهد که تحریم ها برداشته شود. @FoxNews @OANN نه، مرسی! https://t.co/fWdjR1DcUc

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) January 26, 2020

On Friday, the United States introduced new sanctions against Tehran that targeted six international petrochemical and petroleum companies and two persons accused of helping Iran skirt sanctions, the Treasury Department's Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC) said in a statement.

Iran's Fars News agency also reported that its website was blocked by OFAC and the agency's inclusion in its Specially Designated Nationals (SDN) list.

The United States has repeatedly vowed to continue economic pressure on Iran, insisting that the country should "change its behaviour", as US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo has reiterated in a series of tweets recently.

Maximum pressure on the Iranian regime will continue until its behavior changes. Today we imposed sanctions against China, Hong Kong, and UAE-based entities for operating in Iran’s oil and petrochemical sectors. If you facilitate this regime's activities, you will be sanctioned.

— Secretary Pompeo (@SecPompeo) January 23, 2020

On 5 January, Iran announced it will no longer comply with the limits of the 2015 nuclear deal, dubbed the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA), but Iran's President Hassan Rouhani said that Tehran would still not seek nuclear weapons.

The United States withdrew from the 2015 nuclear deal on 8 May 2018, reintroducing harsh economic restrictions against Tehran. A year later, Iran announced that it had started to suspend some of its obligations under the nuclear deal.