Iran goes to UN’s highest court over US sanctions
IRAN went to the United Nations’ highest court yesterday 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 yesterday at the court’s headquarters in The Hague, the Netherlands, Iran asked judges to urgently suspend the sanctions to protect Iranian interests while the case challenging their legality is being heard — a process that 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 reimpose sanctions on Tehran. Washington also threatened other countries with sanctions if they don’t cut off Iranian oil imports by early November.
Iranian representative Mohsen Mohebi told the court 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 Islamic Republic’s nuclear program in return for the lifting of most US and international sanctions.
Mohebi said the re-imposition of sanctions was unjustified as Iran was abiding by the terms of the 2015 deal. He said sanctions are already having damaging effects on Iran’s economy and society and threaten to further destabilize the volatile Mideast. “This policy is nothing but a naked economic aggression against my country,” he said.
The US, which argues that the court does not have jurisdiction in the case, is to present its legal arguments to judges today.
Rulings by the court, which settles disputes between nations, are final and legally binding.
The US rejection of the nuclear deal is not backed by some key allies. Last week, the European Union announced its first financial support package to help bolster Iran’s flagging economy, part of the bloc’s commitment to keep the nuclear deal alive.
Iranian President Hassan Rouhani, meanwhile, urged the remaining signatories to the nuclear agreement to act to save the pact, though France’s leader again called for broader talks on Tehran’s missile program and its role in the Middle East.
In a phone call to French President Emmanuel Macron, Rouhani said Iran wanted the Europeans to give guarantees on banking channels and oil sales as well as in the fields of insurance and transportation, according to the state-run Iranian news agency IRNA.
“Iran has acted upon all its promises in the nuclear agreement and, with attention to the one-sided withdrawal of America ... expects the remaining partners to operate their programs more quickly and transparently,” Rouhani was quoted as saying yesterday.
Macron reiterated France’s commitment to maintaining the accord, a remark aimed at soothing Tehran. But he repeated his earlier calls for broader discussions with all relevant parties that would include Iran’s nuclear program after 2025, its ballistics program and its influence in the Middle East region.