in each of two suicide bombings blamed on Iran and Iranian-backed Islamic groups.
The latest awards take the total sum assessed by US judges against the Islamic Republic for terrorist attacks to more than $20 billion.
The dozens of people who have won such suits are never expected to collect a penny from Iran, but they are collecting money from the US government, even though the generally stated reason for bringing the suits is to make Iran pay for its resort to terror.
One of last week‘s rulings came on behalf of the family of Alan Beer, a US citizen who was killed in Jerusalem in 2003 in the bombing of a bus by the Palestinian organization Hamas.
The other award was made to American citizen Seth Haim, his father and his brother. They were injured in the 1995 bombing of a bus in the Gaza Strip by the Shaqaqi Faction of the Palestine Islamic Jihad.
US District Judge Royce Lamberth—who has handled the vast bulk of these suits against Iran—said he was making the awards in the interest of deterring future terrorist attacks. He ruled that the attacking groups were backed by Iran and therefore Iran was responsible.
As always in the dozens of cases brought since such suits were permitted in 1995, the Islamic Republic refused to appear in court, thereby allowing the judgment to go against the Islamic Republic.
Iran says it should be exempt from such suits because international law gives it “sovereign immunity” from all suits. But there is no such law.