Iran

On 13-14 April 2024 Iran launched Operation True Promise — approximately 300 drones, cruise missiles, and ballistic missiles at Israel — in retaliation for an Israeli strike on the Iranian consulate in Damascus on 1 April 2024 that killed IRGC Quds Force general Mohammad Reza Zahedi. Israel's military said about 99% of projectiles were intercepted by the Iron Dome and Arrow systems, with air support from the US, UK, France, and Jordan. Israel responded on 19 April with a limited strike on an Iranian air-defence radar near Isfahan. On 1 October 2024 Iran launched Operation True Promise II — roughly 180 ballistic missiles — following the Israeli killings of Ismail Haniyeh in Tehran and Hassan Nasrallah in Beirut. Israel struck Iranian missile production facilities on 26 October 2024. Both exchanges are confirmed military actions, not conspiracy theories; the 'conspiracy' dimension concerns competing narratives about who started each escalation cycle and whether Western air support amounted to a covert co-belligerent commitment. Direct hostilities later went far beyond 2024: a 12-day war in June 2025 that included US strikes on Iran's nuclear sites, and a US-Israeli war on Iran from 28 February 2026 that killed Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei and had not formally ended by November 2026.

On 3 July 1988 USS Vincennes (CG-49) shot down Iran Air Flight 655 — an Airbus A300 — over the Strait of Hormuz, killing all 290 people on board including 66 children. The US Navy's Aegis combat system misidentified the aircraft as an Iranian F-14. The US government never formally apologised; a 1996 ICJ settlement paid $61.8 million in compensation without admission of liability. The cover-up framing centres on the Vincennes having entered Iranian territorial waters (initially denied), Captain Will Rogers III later receiving the Legion of Merit, and a 1992 Newsweek report claiming the crew celebrated the shootdown.

A computer worm discovered in 2010 that sabotaged industrial control systems in Iran, widely identified as the centrifuges at the Natanz uranium-enrichment plant. David Sanger's 2012 New York Times reporting, based on anonymous current and former officials, said it was developed by the United States and Israel under a programme code-named Olympic Games; neither government has officially acknowledged the operation.

Reagan administration officials secretly sold arms to Iran, despite a US embargo, in an effort to free hostages in Lebanon, and diverted part of the profits to fund Nicaraguan Contra rebels while Congress had banned such aid. Exposed in November 1986; the Independent Counsel charged 14 people and won 11 convictions, but two were overturned on appeal and six defendants were pardoned by President Bush in December 1992.