Iran is not known to currently possess weapons of mass destruction (WMD) and has signed treaties repudiating the possession of WMD including the Biological Weapons Convention, the Chemical Weapons Convention, and the Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT).

The Iran–Iraq War followed a long-running history of territorial border disputes between the two states, as a result of which Iraq planned to retake the eastern bank of the Shatt al-Arab that it had ceded to Iran in the 1975 Algiers Agreement.

Six military engagements, encompassing five wars, all of which are interventions, currently involve the US: the Yemeni Civil War, the Somali Civil War, the Syrian Civil War, the Gaza War and the Iran–Israel war.