Iran takes US to ICJ, alleges financial plot

washington — The United States will “vigorously defend” itself in the International Court of Justice (ICJ) against Iran’s challenge to the reimposition of US sanctions, Secretary of State Mike Pompeo said on Monday.

Iran demanded in The Hague that the top United Nations court suspend the unilateral US sanctions, which were slapped back on three weeks ago following the US withdrawal from a landmark 2015 nuclear accord with Tehran.

“We will vigorously defend against Iran’s meritless claims this week in The Hague,” Pompeo said. He said Iran’s filing with the International Court of Justice was “an attempt to interfere with the sovereign rights of the United States to take lawful actions, including re-imposition of sanctions.

In arguments in The Hague, Iran’s representative Mohsen Mohebi accused Washington of plotting his country’s “economic strangulation”.

the hague — Iran went to the United Nations’ highest court on Monday in a bid to have US sanctions lifted following President Donald Trump’s decision earlier this year to re-impose them, calling the move “naked economic aggression.”

Iran filed the case with the International Court of Justice in July, claiming that sanctions the Trump administration imposed on May 8 breach a 1955 bilateral agreement known as the Treaty of Amity that regulates economic and consular ties between the two countries.

At hearings that started on Monday at the court’s headquarters in The Hague, Tehran is asking judges at the world court to urgently suspend sanctions to protect Iranian interests while the underlying case challenging their legality is being heard — a process which can take years.

Trump said in May that he would pull the United States out of a 2015 agreement over Iran’s nuclear program and would re-impose sanctions on Tehran. Washington also threatened countries with sanctions if they don’t cut off Iranian oil imports by early November. Iranian representative Mohsen Mohebi told the court that the US decision was a clear breach of the 1955 treaty as it was “intended to damage, as severely as possible, Iran’s economy.”

Iran’s 2015 nuclear deal imposed restrictions on the nuclear programme in return for the lifting of most US and international sanctions against Tehran. However, the deal came with time limits and did not address Iran’s ballistic missile programme or its regional policies in Syria and elsewhere. Trump has repeatedly pointed to those omissions in referring to the accord as the “worst deal ever.”

Mohebi said the re-imposition of sanctions was unjustified as Iran was abiding by the terms of the 2015 deal. —