Iran and the United States went to the brink of war three times during the Presidency of Donald Trump, Iran’s former president Hassan Rouhani has disclosed.

Rouhani, speaking to the central council of the Moderation and Development Party this week, said that the first instance was when Iran shot down a US RQ-4A Global Hawk BAMS-D surveillance drone over the Persian Gulf in June 2019.

“On the day an American drone was targeted in the Persian Gulf, the Americans threatened us, and various messages were exchanged, ultimately, war was deliberately avoided,” Rouhani was quoted as saying by local media.

The second instance was when drones and missiles hit an oil facility in Saudi Arabia in September 2019, when Iran and its Houthi proxy forces in Yemen were blamed for the attack.

The third time Iran and the US went to the brink of war, Rouhani said, was when a US air strike killed Iran’s top extraterritorial military and intelligence operator, Gen. Qassem Soleimani in Baghdad on January 3, 2020. Iran retaliated by firing ballistic missiles at bases in Iraq hosting US forces five days later.

Rouhani stated that “They were saying that if you attack our forces, we'll target 52 points in Iran. However, we precisely targeted Ain al-Asad [air base], which was a planned operation. In total, we managed to pass through three phases of the war with the United States during the Trump era.”

Former President Donald Trump pulled out the Obama-era JCPOA nuclear accord in May 2018 and imposed tough economic sanctions against Iran, known as ‘maximum pressure’ policy.