The latest on the US-Iran crisis

People hold posters showing the portrait of Iranian Revolutionary Guard Major General Qasem Soleimani and chant slogans during a protest outside the US Consulate on Jan. 5 in Istanbul, Turkey.

Iran is working to file a criminal case against the US army, government and President Trump in the international criminal court, according to Iran’s semi-official news agency Tasnim. 

“There is no doubt that US military action was an act of terrorism,” Esmaeili added.  

The spokesman said the case would be handled by Iranian courts, Iraq, “where the crime happened,” and the international criminal court. “The process may be really long but we are pursuing this case to the end,” Esmaeili said, according to Tasnim.

“Even Trump can be summoned to Iran after his presidency and prosecuted according to article 8 of the Islamic penal law,” the spokesperson added.

At least 30 people have been arrested in Iran for taking part in what the Iranian government says are illegal rallies, which put “national security” at risk, the spokesperson for the Iranian judiciary Gholamhossein Esmaili said Tuesday. 

“About 30 people has been arrested in the recent protests,” Esmaili added.

This new decade’s consequential first weeks began with the United States openly targeting and killing a foreign military leader for the first time since World War II. They ended with the tragic, unintended cost of conflict — Iran admitting it mistakenly shot down a Ukrainian passenger jet, killing all 176 people on board.

In an extraordinary mea culpa on Iranian state television Saturday, the commander of the unit responsible said “I wished I was dead,” when he realized that what his unit thought was a cruise missile was actually a plane.

Ukraine is demanding a full investigation and compensation for the victims — mostly Iranian, Canadian and Ukrainian — who died when the airliner was shot out of the sky, hours after Iran launched a number of missiles at two bases housing US troops in Iraq.

Now what? How are the families of the passengers and crew compensated for this unbearable loss? And how do US and Iranian government leaders, now in direct and open military confrontation for the first time since Iran’s Islamic Revolution, map a route out of this crisis?

Read the rest of Amanpour’s analysis here.