Iran court orders US to pay $330m for 'planning coup'

TEHRAN, Aug 26, 2023 (AFP): A court in Tehran has ordered the US government to pay $330 million in damages for "planning a coup" against the newly established Islamic republic in 1980, the judiciary said Saturday.
A year after the 1979 Islamic revolution that toppled the US-backed shah, a group of mostly army officers tried to overthrow the new government.
State news agency IRNA said the "insurgents" were led by Saeed Mahdiyoun, a former Iranian air force commander, and had their headquarters in Nojeh, an air base in the western Hamedan province.
Several people were killed in clashes between the coup plotters and government forces, and scores of others were arrested.
"Their objective was to seize control of military bases across the country and target strategic centres and residences of the revolution's leaders. However, their efforts were thwarted," IRNA said.
Last year, relatives of those killed in the coup filed a legal petition with Iran's International Court demanding damages, the judiciary's Mizan Online website said.
They specifically accused the United States of "planning and executing" the coup, Mizan said.
The court ruled in their favour, ordering "the American government to pay the plaintiffs 30 million dollars in material and moral damages, and 300 million dollars in punitive damages," it added.
Tehran and Washington have had no diplomatic relations since the aftermath of the 1979 revolution.
In 1953, the British and US intelligence services orchestrated the overthrow of prime minister Mohammad Mossadegh who had nationalised Iran's lucrative oil industry.
In 2016, the US Supreme Court ordered that Iranian assets frozen in the United States should be paid to victims of attacks Washington has blamed on Tehran, including the 1983 bombing of a US Marine barracks in Beirut and a 1996 blast in Saudi Arabia.
In March this year, the International Court of Justice ruled that Washington's freezing of funds belonging to several Iranian individuals and companies was "manifestly unreasonable".
But it ruled it had no jurisdiction to unblock nearly $2 billion in Iranian central bank assets frozen by the United States.
Tehran, which denies all responsibility for the attacks blamed on it by the United States, says that a series of US court judgments have awarded victims a total of $56 billion in damages.
Seventy years after a CIA-orchestrated coup toppled Iran's prime minister, its legacy remains both contentious and complicated for the Islamic Republic as tensions stay high with the United States.
While highlighted as a symbol of Western imperialism by Iran's theocracy, the coup unseating Prime Minister Mohammad Mossadegh -- over America's fears about a possible tilt toward the Soviet Union and the loss of Iranian crude oil -- appeared backed at the time by the country's leading Shiite clergy.
But nowadays, hard-line Iranian state television airs repeated segments describing the coup as showing how America can't be trusted, while authorities bar the public from visiting Mossadegh's grave in a village outside of Tehran.
Such conflicts are common in Iran, where "Death to America" can still be heard at Friday prayers in Tehran while many on its streets say they'd welcome a better relationship with the U.S. But as memories of the coup further fade away along with those alive during it, controlling which allegory Iranians see in it has grown more important for both the country's government and its people.