Iran opens UN fight to free billions frozen in US
Tuesday, 20 September 2022
THE HAGUE, Sept 19 (AFP): Iran opens its legal battle before the UN's top court Monday to unfreeze billions of dollars in US assets, which Washington says must go to victims of terrorist attacks blamed on Tehran.
The case before the International Court of Justice comes as hopes fade of reviving a landmark deal-which former US president Donald Trump withdrew from in 2018 -- that sought to tame Iran's nuclear ambitions.
Tehran took Washington to the Hague-based ICJ in 2016 after the US Supreme Court ordered some $2 billion in Iranian assets to be frozen, ordering the cash to go to survivors and relatives of attacks blamed on the Islamic republic.
These included the 1983 bombing of a US Marine barracks in Beirut which killed 299 people including 241 US soldiers, and the 1996 Khobar Towers bombing in Saudi Arabia which left 19 dead.
Iran, however, said the freezing of the funds breached the 1955 Treaty of Amity with the United States, an agreement signed before Iran's 1979 Islamic Revolution severed relations between the countries.
Tehran argued the United States had illegally seized Iranian financial assets and those of Iranian companies-and with Iran's clerical regime facing economic difficulties after sanctions and runaway consumer prices, resolving the case is crucial.