US abandons Palestine and Iran accords
ACTIONS SYMBOLIC AS PREVIOUS REGIMES ALWAYS IGNORED ICC RULINGS ON DISPUTES
The Trump administration withdrew from two obscure international accords that allowed Iran and Palestine to pursue legal action against it overseas, which were largely symbolic rebukes that were in line with the president’s dislike for global organisations seeking to influence US policy.
Early Wednesday, Secretary of State Michael Pompeo announced the US was quitting a 1955 US-Iran friendship treaty. While largely irrelevant given the rancour between the two countries, that agreement served as the foundation for a ruling by the International Court of Justice (ICC) that ordered the US to ease some sanctions against Tehran.
Soon after, National Security Adviser John Bolton said the US would leave an optional part of the Vienna Convention on Diplomatic Relations that let countries settle disputes with each other in the same court. Last month, the Palestinians used that protocol to sue the US over Trump’s decision to move the American embassy in Israel from Tel Aviv to occupied Jerusalem.
“The US will not sit idly by as baseless politicised claims are brought against us,” Bolton said at the White House.
Of the decision to leave the 1955 friendship treaty with Iran, Pompeo said: “This is a decision, frankly, that is 39 years overdue.”
No recognition since 1986
The actions were almost entirely symbolic given that past US administrations, Democratic and Republican alike, have long ignored ICC rulings, as the Trump administration was certain to do as well. The US stopped recognising the court’s compulsory jurisdiction in 1986.
Wednesday’s moves came hours after the court made a ruling that sanctions being reimposed on Iran unfairly infringe on that country’s imports of medicine and food as well as spare parts needed for safe civil aviation. The court ordered the removal of “any impediments” on trade in those goods. The US is seeking to choke off Iran’s economy with sanctions against the country’s oil industry that take effect in November.
Iranian Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif, who has been the focus of much of the administration’s ire in recent weeks, responded to Wednesday’s moves by calling the US an “outlaw regime”.