Iran has increased its threats against the West and targets in the Arabian Gulf, in response to Western sanctions and the boycott of Iran's Central Bank, a report from the Middle East Media Research Institute (MEMRI) shows.

The report shows that the threats have come from all levels of the Iranian government, military leadership, and society. Iranian parliament member and national security deputy chairman, Hossein Ebrahimi announced last week that Iran would not allow its oil to be boycotted and would instead turn the Gulf into "graveyard" for foreign forces.

In December, the conservative Serat News published an article called "We Welcome War," which called for jihad against American forces by Muslims around the world. Another Iranian information portal, Mashregh News, published photos of American military installations in the region and in Turkey and gave detailed plans of how to strike U.S. forces.

Even a leader of the Basij, Iran's plainclothes semi-official militia, has repeated similar rhetoric. "The U.S. Fifth Fleet in Bahrain, the American land forces [base] in Kuwait, and the U.S. Air Force [base] in Qatar are entirely surrounded by holy fighters of the Islamic ummah who are counting the minutes in anticipation of the command to wipe out the U.S." said militia commander Mohammad Reza-Naqdi, at a November Basij convention.

While many Iranian outlets and government agencies have called for violence against America before, active plots by Iranian military groups and proxies shows a new level of aggression. Azerbaijan recently broke up an Iranian-led plot to kill the Israeli ambassador. The United States thwarted an Iranian plot in October in which Iran's Revolutionary Guard tried to contract out the killing of the Saudi ambassador in Washington, as well as the bombing of the Saudi and Israeli embassies there.