The court will have to decide whether the United States had the right to block Iranian funds in 2016 in order to compensate victims of various terrorist acts allocated by the American justice to the Islamic Republic.
Le Monde with AFP
It is before the International Court of Justice (CIJ) that Iran will plead its cause, Monday, September 19, in order to recover nearly $ 2 billion (the equivalent of 2 billion euros) Assets frozen in the United States, who wish that these funds go to the victims of attacks attributed to Tehran. The highest UN jurisdiction, which sits in The Hague, holds this week the first hearings on the merits, when the endless nuclear negotiations with Iran are completely blocked.
The Islamic Republic had initiated this procedure in mid-2016 in order to obtain the release of its funds, the American Supreme Court of which had just authorized the seizure. Courts in the United States had previously decided that these sums should be blocked to compensate Americans victims of terrorist attacks, an approach deemed illegal by Iran. The sums were claimed by a thousand victims and families of victims of fomented or supported attacks by Tehran, according to American justice.
Among them are in particular the relatives of the 241 American soldiers killed on October 23, 1983 in two suicide attacks which had targeted the American and French contingents of the multinational security force in Beirut. But, in his complaint before the CIJ, Tehran argues that Washington violated a bilateral treaty signed in 1955 by Iran’s shah with the American government, relating to economic relations and consular rights.
This treaty was signed before the 1979 Islamic Revolution in Iran, marking the end of diplomatic relations with the United States. In 2019, the CIJ had declared herself competent in the case, rejecting a request from Washington, who believes that Tehran has dirty hands in view of her alleged ties with terrorism.
Nuclear negotiations In the impasse
This is not the first time that Washington has seen his arguments refuted by the CIJ. After the American withdrawal, in 2018, of the Iranian nuclear agreement, the jurisdiction had ordered the Trump administration to end new sanctions against Tehran aimed at humanitarian purposes. Shortly after, the United States announced that it ended the 1955 friendship treaty, invoked by the Court to justify its decision.
CIJ decisions, the main judicial body of the UN, are binding and cannot be subject to appeal procedure. However, the Court has no way to enforce them.
The hearings on Iranian frozen assets arrive while nuclear negotiations with Iran are deadlocked and no breakthrough is to be expected in the short term, according to European diplomacy Josep Borrell. Since April 2021, Iran has been engaged in talks under EU mediation to relaunch the ACCrod de Vienne (JPCOA), concluded in 2015 with the United Kingdom, France, Germany, China, Russia and the United States to limit the Iranian nuclear program in exchange for the lifting of international sanctions.
A final text was put on the table on August 8 by Josep Borrell. The compromise must allow Iran to fulfill its obligations again under the JCPOA and in the United States to return to the agreement.