Sanctions

Ayatollah Ali Khamenei said the U.S. has "broken" its "promises tens of times, and it is the same now."

McCaul said sanctions on military leaders would be "targeted at these military thugs that have taken the country over and are killing their own people."

Sen. Jim Inhofe is leading a call for the Biden administration to "reset" its approach to nuclear negotiations with Tehran.

Beijing has increased its imports of Iranian oil to record levels, despite the American "maximum pressure" campaign.

The U.S. and Canada have already condemned China's actions toward Uyghurs and other predominantly Muslim groups, including the government's use of internment camps, as genocide.

The report by the Office of the Director of National Intelligence found that Russia wanted to harm Joe Biden's candidacy.

The U.S. imposed sanctions on several Russian officials this week in response to the poisoning and arrest of pro-democracy and anti-corruption campaigner Alexei Navalny.

Vladimir Ashurkov from Navalny's Anti-Corruption Foundation told Newsweek he welcomed the Biden administration measures.

The measures come as a poll shows fewer Russians want to see Vladimir Putin remain president after 2024.

Newman School of Journalism's Peter Beinart fears that, to appease political rivals at home, President Joe Biden is "accepting policies like sanctions that enjoy bipartisan support, even if they are morally indefensible and endanger American power."

"Facebook is treating the situation in Myanmar as an emergency," Facebook's Director of Policy for APAC Emerging Countries Rafael Frankel wrote.

"The strong and unified message emerging from the United States has been essential…to encourage other countries to join us in pressing for immediate return to democracy," the president said.

Attempts by the U.S. State Department to contact deposed Myanmar leader Aung San Suu Kyi, who is currently detained, were rejected.

The anti-corruption campaigner was jailed on Wednesday after returning to Russia voluntarily following an FSB assassination attempt.

"In a democracy, force should never seek to overrule the will of the people or attempt to erase the outcome of a credible election," the president said in his first statement on the issue.

The political clock in Iran is ticking back fast, and the damage done by the previous American administration is on the cusp of being irreparable.

On the day of President Joe Biden's inauguration, Georgia Congresswoman Marjorie Taylor Greene tweeted that "Communist China has their President ... China Joe."

"Whatever has happened under Trump's administration must go back to the pre-Trump era," a top Iranian official said.

Iran said it took the vessel, Hankuk Chemi, in the Persian Gulf because it was violating environmental laws, which Seoul denies.

Iran returns to the nuclear obligations it gradually violated, while the U.S. provides the economic sanctions relief Tehran is afforded to under the deal. This is the fastest way to deescalate the situation.

"You would not have all the various secure systems of communication that the United States has if you were not concerned that this information might go where it's not intended," former OFAC official Peter Kucik told Newsweek.

Claims that Russia was behind a hack of key U.S. federal institutions come as a report revealed just how far Moscow went to target opposition politician Alexei Navalny.

China is revoking visa exemptions for U.S. diplomats visiting Hong Kong and Macau and imposing sanctions on Congress members.

Chinese foreign ministry spokesperson Hua Chunying made the analogy Thursday when asked about Beijing's recent "Wolf Warrior" approach to diplomacy.

China's foreign ministry did not say which high-level officials would be affected, but Secretary of State Mike Pompeo is reportedly likely to be among them.

Jake Sullivan, Biden's pick to be national security adviser, said Monday that the incoming administration thinks "it is feasible and achievable" to return to the Iran deal.

The State Department imposed the sanctions on 14 Chinese lawmakers over the clampdown on freedoms in Hong Kong.

Facing sanctions on many fronts, the Russian president extended by a year its own measures on countries that have tried to punish Moscow.

After years of 'maximum pressure', the political narrative in Iran is beginning to favor local hardliners, forecasted to win the presidency in June. Trump may have pre-emptively torpedoed American diplomacy for the next Administration.

Iranian officials have condemned the U.S. for imposing additional rounds of sanctions even as the country grapples with the COVID-19 pandemic.