Timeline: Recent US-Iran tensions

World
Europe

01:11

Since the historic high in 2015, the relationship between Iran and the US has soured and, in the last five months, has nosedived. This is primarily because of US President Donald Trump's decision to withdraw from the nuclear deal signed in 2015.

Several major events have increased the tensions between the two countries this year. It all began on May 8, 2018, the day Trump officially pulled out of the Iran nuclear agreement, which he referred to as a "horrible, one-sided" deal. Until then, the pact was considered to be the biggest foreign policy achievement of the Obama administration.

(German Foreign Minister Heiko Maas, French Foreign Minister Jean-Yves Le Drian, Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi, European Union High Representative for Foreign Affairs and Security Policy Federica Mogherini, Iranian Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif and Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov attend a meeting in Vienna, Austria, July 6, 2018. /VCG Photo)

Even as Europe and other signatories vowed to save the deal, many European firms decided to halt their Iran operations.

The second blow came in August when Trump announced he would reimpose economic sanctions on Iran.

As the US continues its diplomatic efforts to isolate Iran, the European Union (EU) along with Russia and China have agreed to create a trading mechanism that aims to bypass this latest round of US economic sanctions, which are slated to go into effect in November.