The reports cite several cases where the US government and courts had agreed on seizure of Iranian bonds and assets on terrorist and other pretexts. President Rouhani established a workgroup headed by Minister of Economy to address the case from legal and international law perspectives and provide necessary advice and recommendations to higher authorities for further action.
The workgroup has also a mission to investigate the factors and causes behind such seizures and other restrictive measures taken by the US courts and government.
In recent such measure, a US court gave verdict to pay compensations for families of US military personnel killed in a blast in US military base in Beirut in 1983. The court implicated Iran in the evet which killed 243 American army men.
The report by the workgroup had carefully considered papers of the Foreign Ministry and letters and correspondents of Supreme National Security Council, Central Bank, President’s office, and Center for International Legal Affairs; “hostile acts by the Congress and the US government are by far violation of Iranian national interests based on an ill-conceived claim and a highly doubted court verdict, which effectively breaches the principle of immunity of foreign assets. This is not only unprecedented in legal history, but it is also defying peremptory norms of international law and an example of piracy in broad daylight,” the report read.
It also criticizes the actions by previous cabinets who the report findings indicated, had ignored the warnings and caveats about depositing Iranian assets in a US mainland bank and failed to make timely efforts to withdraw the assets and bonds to avoid such appropriations between fall 2007 and summer 2008, in a condition that the US courts and government’s potential access to these bonds would have been quite a threat and which duly targeted Iranian assets by court verdicts.
The workgroup report recommends that the SNSC intervene in the case since the case had not related exclusively to economic and financial sector, but it had national security dimensions as well.
“The cabinet has put in place all diplomatic and legal resources and efforts to vindicate Iranian national interests, which included but is not limited to securing a NAM Conference condemnation of the US court verdict,” the report concluded.
SH/3660126