U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo formally notified the United Nations that the United States is seeking the return of all international sanctions on Iran, or "snapback," under the terms of the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA). According to the JCPOA, any participant to the agreement can notify the U.N. Security Council that Iran is no longer complying with the agreement. If the U.N. Security Council fails to pass a resolution extending sanctions relief within 30 days of such a notification, all previous U.N. sanctions on Iran automatically come back into effect. France, Germany, Iran, Russia, and the United Kingdom argue that the United States lacks the standing to invoke the JCPOA because the United States withdrew from the agreement in 2018. The United States argues that it has the "explicit right" to evoke snapback since the JCPOA was enshrined by U.N. Security Council Resolution 2231. The U.S. move to invoke the full "snapback" of sanctions follows its failure to extend a U.N. arms embargo on Iran.

According to U.S. intelligence agencies, Iran paid bounties to the Taliban for attacking American and coalition troops in Afghanistan at least six times in 2019. The bounties included a payment to the Haqqani network, a Taliban faction, for launching a suicide attack against a U.S. air base at Bagram in December 2019.

The United States seized the cargo of four Venezuela-bound oil tankers alleged to be carrying Iranian petroleum after U.S. prosecutors filed a lawsuit in July seeking permission to intercept the ships. U.S. officials rerouted the ships, the Luna, Pandi, Bering, and Bella, to Houston. The four ships had been traveling with a flotilla escorted by an Iranian naval vessel but split off after U.S. authorities contacted the owners of the vessels. U.S. prosecutors allege that an Iranian businessman tied to the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) had arranged the shipments of oil to Venezuela through a series of shell companies. The four ships have ties to companies operated by the Greek businessmen Giorgios and Marios Gialozoglou. Some of these vessels had conducted ship-to-ship transfers, and one of the ships faced allegations of delivering oil to Iranian-backed Houthi rebels in Yemen. In a separate case, a U.S. judge awarded the United States the title to the Grace 1, a ship that U.S. authorities accused of delivering Iranian oil to Syria in 2019.

The Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC), composed of Bahrain, Kuwait, Oman, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, and the United Arab Emirates, expressed its support for extending an arms embargo on Iran in a letter to the United Nations. The letter noted that Iran had "not ceased or desisted from armed interventions in neighboring countries, directly and through organizations and movements armed and trained by Iran." The letter accused Iran of arming members of Hezbollah in Lebanon and Syria, Shiite militias in Iraq, and militants in Bahrain, Kuwait, and Saudi Arabia. The embargo blocks Iran from exporting arms and importing major weapon systems.