September 23, 2022
The United States has urged the International Court of Justice to throw out a case brought by Iran seeking to win back around $2 billion worth of frozen Iranian assets that the US Supreme Court awarded to victims of the 1983 bombing in Lebanon and other attacks linked to Tehran.
The leader of the US legal team, Richard Visek, told the court September 21 that it should invoke, for the first time, a legal principle known as “unclean hands,” under which a nation can’t bring a case because of its own criminal actions linked to the case.
“Iran’s case should be dismissed in its entirety based on the principle of unclean hands,” Visek told the judges sitting in the court’s Great Hall of Justice in The Hague, The Netherlands.
“The essence of this threshold defense is that Iran’s own egregious conduct, its sponsorship of terrorist acts directed against the United States and US nationals, lies at the very core of its claims,” Visek said.
The world court has never used the “unclean hands” argument to toss out a case, but the argument has been successfully cited in international arbitration cases, Visek said.
“The United States submits that if there was ever a case for application of the principle of unclean hands one that we recognize should be considered only in narrow circumstances it is this case,” Visek said.
Two days earlier, Iran told the court the US asset confiscation was an attempt to destabilize the Tehran government and a violation of international law.
Iran took its claim to the world court in 2016 after the US Supreme Court ruled that money held by Iran’s Central Bank could be used to compensate the 241 victims of the 1983 bombing believed to be linked to Tehran of a US Marine base in Lebanon.
The world court ruled it had jurisdiction to hear the case in 2019, rejecting an argument from the US that its national security interests superseded the 1955 Treaty of Amity, which promised friendship and cooperation between the two countries.
“The freedom of navigation and commerce guaranteed by the treaty have been gravely breached,” Tavakol Habibzadeh, head of international legal affairs for Iran, told the 14-judge panel on the first day of a week-long hearing dedicated to the case.
At stake in the case are $1.75 billion in bonds, plus accumulated interest, belonging to the Iranian state but held in a Citibank account in New York. One question not being addressed by the court is why Iran left the money in the US when all the world knew Washington was trolling for Iranian funds to seize.
Visek also told judges that Iran’s claims should be rejected because the frozen assets are state holdings not covered by the 1955 treaty.
In 1983, a truck bomb in Beirut killed 241 American troops. Minutes later, a second blast nearby killed 58 French soldiers. Iran has denied involvement, but a US District Court judge found Tehran responsible in 2003. That ruling said Iran’s ambassador to Syria at the time called “a member of the Iranian Revolutionary Guard and instructed him to instigate the Marine barracks bombing.”
The International Court of Justice, commonly called the World Court, is the United Nations court dealing with disputes between states. Its rulings are binding, though the ICJ has no power to enforce them, and the United States and Iran are among a handful of countries to have disregarded its decisions.
A ruling in this case is expected next year.
