UN court hears Iran’s challenge against US sanctions

THE HAGUE: Iran’s legal challenge against renewed sanctions by the United States goes before the UN’s top court, as Tehran seeks to avert painful punitive measures that could hurt its still fragile economy.

Tehran filed a suit against US President Donald Trump’s decision to reimpose economic sanctions at the Hague-based International Court of Justice last month.

After unilaterally pulling out of a historic hard-won deal aimed at curbing Iran’s nuclear programme in May, Trump slapped a first round of sanctions on the country in early August.

And a second round is set to come into effect in early November, this time blocking Iran’s valuable oil and energy sales. But Tehran argues that Washington has no right to reinstate such measures and is calling on the ICJ to order the US to ‘immediately suspend’ them. It is also demanding compensation.

The ICJ is expected to take a couple of months to decide whether to grant Tehran’s request for a provisional ruling, while a final decision in the case could actually take years.

International sanctions against Iran were lifted in 2015 when it a struck a landmark accord with the US, Britain, China, France, Germany, Russia, agreeing to rein its nuclear ambitions. But Trump described it as a “horrible one-sided deal (that) failed to achieve the fundamental objective of blocking all paths to an Iranian nuclear bomb.”

And even though all of the other parties pleaded with him not to abandon the pact, Trump pulled out and announced he would reinstate sanctions.

Tehran – which argues that the move violates a little-known Treaty of Amity and Economic Relations signed by the two countries in 1955 – says that the new sanctions are already hurting its economy. And its currency, the rial, has lost around half its value since April.

A raft of international companies – including France’s Total, Peugeot and Renault, and Germany’s Siemens and Daimler – have already suspended operations in Iran in the wake of the US move. — AFP