“Unjustifiable US hostility toward Iran persists,” says American author and radio host Stephen Lendman, in response to a recently issued order by US Supreme Court against Iran on the transfer of about $2bn of frozen Iranian assets to the families of victims of the 1983 bombing in Beirut; a ruling which, as FM Zarif would say, “cannot stand in any serious civilized court of law.”
Lendman believes that last year’s nuclear deal between Iran and the 5+1 group of countries, with the US at the forefront, has in fact changed nothing in Washington’s desire to replace Iranian sovereignty with “puppet governance it controls.”
“Regime change remains firm bipartisan policy,” he adds.
Lendman offers a brief account of what really had happened in the 1983 bombing of Marine barracks in Beirut and how things proceeded from there: “In October 1983, during Israel’s first Lebanon war, slaughtering thousands, including at the Sabra and Shatila refugee camps, the Beirut Barracks were attacked, killing 241 US marines.
Iran, Syria and Hezbollah were wrongfully blamed for a Mossad false flag. Israel wanted anti-Arab sentiment stoked to enlist US support for its regional aggression.
In September 2007, US District Judge Royce Lamberth ordered Iran to pay over $2.6 billion to 1,000 family members and a handful of survivors.
In 2012, Congress passed legislation, granting victims of the attack the right to be compensated from frozen Iranian funds.
On April 20, the Supreme Court ruled Tehran must pay families of victims and survivors nearly $2 billion in compensation - including victims of other attacks wrongfully linked to Iran.
America’s Supreme Court is stacked with conservatives and neoconservatives - not a civil libertarian Brennan, Douglas or Thurgood Marshall permitted to sit on the court today.
Writing for a 6 - 2 majority, Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg supported flagrant injustice, saying ‘the victims of Iran-sponsored terrorist attacks will be permitted to (sue for compensation) against (its) assets.’
Israeli high crimes go unpunished. Iran is ordered to pay compensation to its victims. Injustice is served.”
Lendman also believes that the US Supreme Court ruling against Iran is “entirely political, ignoring clear facts, and showing hostility toward Iran continues.”
This isn’t the first time the American courts have held Iran responsible for attacks that have nothing to do with the country, namely the ruling by a New York City judge that Iran should pay more than $10.5 billion in damages to the families of those killed in the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks, based on the fact that Iran had ‘failed’ to defend claims that it aided the September 11 hijackers in a court hearing that actually never existed. ‘The height of absurdity’, Foreign Minister Zarif has called it, while adding the Supreme Court ruling is ‘highway robbery’.
“The ruling authorized the grand theft of illegally frozen Iranian assets, and Zarif is entirely right,” says Lendman. “To me, it shows negotiating with America is a waste of time. It routinely breaches what it agrees to and when a new president succeeds Obama, the nuclear deal could be rescinded - an illegal act if it happens, but who'll hold America accountable?”
On Tuesday, Iran's Foreign Ministry summoned the Swiss ambassador to Tehran to protest over the ruling. In the meeting that followed, Mohammad Keshavarz-zadeh, General Director for the Americas at the Iranian Foreign Ministry, deemed the ruling a blatant violation of mutual contract obligations such as the 1955 treaty between the two countries, as well as US international legal commitments on the judicial immunity and inviolability of the assets and properties of the Islamic Republic of Iran. He further called the ruling ‘contrary to accepted practices of international law’ which guarantees governments' judicial immunity.
But Lendman believes that summoning the Swiss envoy will not change anything; “The only chance for change is from the grassroots in America, revolutionary change against a vile system harming so many to benefit so few,” he added.
“I don't see any spirit in my country to do anything positive. The level of public indifference and ignorance are appalling,” he lamented.
Stephen Lendman received a BA from Harvard University and an MBA from the Wharton School at the University of Pennsylvania. Supporting progressive causes and organizations, he began writing in summer 2005 on a broad range of issues. Topics regularly addressed include war and peace; social, economic and political equity; and justice for long-suffering peoples globally - notably, victims of America's imperial wars, Occupied Palestinians and Haitians. In early 2007, he began hosting his own radio program. Currently he hosts the Progressive Radio News Hour on the Progressive Radio Network.
Interview by: Marjohn Sheikhi