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Parliamentarians Pass US Compensation Bill

Parliamentarians Pass US Compensation Bill
Parliamentarians Pass US Compensation Bill

Lawmakers voted to move ahead a bill that requires the government to seek compensation from the US for the damages it has inflicted on Iranians since 1953.  

In an open session of the Majlis on Sunday, 181 legislators, out of the 216 who were present, voted to tag the motion with a "double urgency" status, ICANA reported.

Under the Constitution, a "double urgency" bill must be distributed among lawmakers immediately and put to the vote within 24 hours.

The main sponsor of the bill, Ebrahim Karkhanei, said the US does not understand the language of interaction.

"Since the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action was implemented, the US hostility has been increasing, instead of decreasing," he said.

The JCPOA is the formal name of the July 2015 nuclear deal between Iran and P5+1 (the US, Britain, France, Russia and China, plus Germany), which went into effect on January 16 to lift international sanctions on Tehran in exchange for temporary restrictions on its nuclear activity.

The lawmaker explained that in recent months, the US has taken a series of anti-Iran measures, the last of which is the violation of Iran's state immunity by a US Supreme Court ruling that would allow the transfer of more than $2 billion in frozen funds of the Central Bank of Iran to the families of the soldiers killed in the 1983 bombing on the US Marines barracks in Lebanon and other attacks allegedly linked to Iran.

"How long should the Iranian nation wait?" Karkhanei said.

The 11 cases for which the motion demands the government claim compensation, or support the citizens who seek it, range from the CIA-backed 1953 coup that toppled the democratically elected government of then-prime minister Mohammad Mosaddeq, to providing intelligence, political and military support to the executed Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein who imposed the 1980-88 war on Iran, in which hundreds of thousands of Iranian people were killed and injured.  

The bill further seeks damages over US backing for anti-Iran terrorist groups, including Mujahedin-e Khalq Organization, as well as Washington's sanctions on Tehran and seizure of assets contrary to international conventions and regulations.

On April 20, the US Supreme Court ruled that the US Congress did not usurp the authority of American courts by passing a 2012 law stating that CBI's frozen funds should be paid to the families of soldiers.

Tehran has described the anti-Iran move a "theft" and vowed to confront Washington's "bullying".

President Hassan Rouhani said last Tuesday Iran would soon file a complaint against Washington with the International Court of Justice in The Hague, the Netherlands, over the seizure.

"The government will never allow the money that belongs to the Iranian nation to be easily gobbled up by the Americans," he said.

 

Financialtribune.com