US freezing of Iranian assets 'unlawful'

The International Court of Justice's ruling that Washington unlawfully froze Iranian assets and owes compensation to Teheran not only exposes the United States as a rogue state, but also brings to light its foreign policy failure, analysts said.

They were reacting to an ICJ ruling on March 30 that Washington had violated international law by illegally enabling its courts to freeze the assets of the Central Bank of Iran, or CBI, and that it owed damages to Iranian companies.

The court also said it did not have jurisdiction over an estimated $1.8 billion in frozen assets that the CBI held in a Citibank account in New York.

The analysts said the verdict helps shed light on other countries whose assets were also being held in similar circumstances.

Dina Yulianti Sulaeman, director of the Indonesia Center for Middle East Studies, said this situation "shows the absurdity of the existing international structure" and that improvement must be made.

She noted that though the ICJ stated that the confiscation of Iranian money violates international law, the ICJ also said it has no jurisdiction over most of the funds because they came from Iran's central bank, which is not a commercial bank and therefore not part of the Treaty of Amity, Economic Relations, and Consular Rights.

"The critical question is, why can the US seize other nations' money at its will?" Sulaeman asked.

"The US claims victory because in reality most of Iran's money is still in their hands. Iran claimed victory from a legal aspect, for them proving that the US is violating international law is a victory."

In a series of tweets on March 31, the Iranian Foreign Ministry claimed the ICJ ruling was "proof of the Islamic Republic of Iran's righteousness" and "the violations by the US government".

"The fact that court's ruling requires the US to make reparations for the losses is the key reason for the legitimacy of the Islamic Republic of Iran's demand. In this important verdict, the ICJ correctly rejected all the fake defenses of the US," one of its tweets stated.

In 2016, the US Supreme Court ruled that Iranian assets worth almost $2 billion frozen in the US must be paid to US families of the victims of attacks blamed on Iran, including the bombing of a US Marine Corps barracks in Beirut in 1983. Teheran has repeatedly rejected all such allegations of involvement.

Seyed Mostafa Khoshcheshm, a former professor at the Iranian Foreign Ministry's Faculty of International Relations, said the ICJ has not issued any verdict against Iran, but two verdicts against the US, which means that "Iran has won the case".

US President Joe Biden's administration "feels very much empty-handed" with regard to its foreign policy, Khoshcheshm said. It is "completely understandable why they do not want to acknowledge and admit another failure in foreign policy".

Khoshcheshm said it is not expected that the US will play by the rules or abide by the law. "The US has proved to be a rogue state," he added.