No role for UN court in Iran case, says US

The Hague : The United States told UN judges yesterday they had no jurisdiction to rule on Tehran’s demand for them to order the suspension of debilitating nuclear-related sanctions against Iran. Washington cited security concerns in its first legal response to a suit by the Islamic Republic, which is suffering increasing economic chaos.

Iran has argued that US President Donald Trump breached a 1955 treaty with his decision to reimpose the sanctions after withdrawing from a multilateral nuclear accord. But US State Department lawyer Jennifer Newstead told the International Court of Justice in The Hague that it “lacks prima facie jurisdiction to hear Iran’s claims”. She argued that the United States had the right to protect its national security and other interests.

The treaty “cannot therefore provide a basis for this court’s jurisdiction” in the case, she said. Sanctions on Iran had been lifted under a landmark 2015 accord with the five permanent members of the UN Security Council plus Germany. In return, Tehran made commitments not to seek to develop nuclear weapons. But Trump said the deal did not do enough to curb the threat from Iran.

He pulled out of the accord in May and began reimposing sanctions this month, alarming other signatories to the deal. In the first day of hearings at the ICJ on Monday, Iran’s lawyers said the sanctions were threatening the welfare of its citizens and disrupting tens of billions of dollars’ worth of business deals. The US lawyers held Iran to blame for its economic woes. They have “deep roots in the Iranian government’s mismanagement of its own economy and repression of its own population,” Newstead said.