A senior official said Sunday Iran has filed a lawsuit against the US at the International Court of Justice over a US Supreme Court ruling which would transfer over $2 billion in frozen Iranian funds to American victims of terror attacks.
“The government has stood strongly against the practice of this ruling because these assets belong to the [Iranian] nation and should be spent for its welfare,” Iran's vice president for legal affairs, Elham Aminzadeh said on Sunday, according to Fars News Agency. Aminzadeh added that Iran “has filed a lawsuit at the International Court of Justice and is pursuing” legal procedures to reclaim the funds. Iran threatened last week to turn to the ICJ at The Hague, saying that the American Supreme Court’s decision amounted to theft.
“We hold the US administration responsible for safeguarding Iranian funds. If they don’t, we will go to the ICJ to seek reparations,” Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif said last week at a joint news conference with his visiting Macedonian counterpart Nicolas Poposki. The US court ruled two weeks ago that it will hand over nearly $2 billion in Iran’s frozen assets to survivors and relatives of Americans killed in attacks in Lebanon three decades ago and blamed on the Islamic Republic.
