The State Dept. released a statement Sunday saying the US and Iran have settled a long outstanding claim at the Iran-US Claims Tribunal in the Hague.
The original claim was over a $400 million Trust Fund used by Iran to purchase military equipment from the US prior to the break in diplomatic ties. In 1981, with the reaching of the Algiers Accords and the creation of the Iran-US Claims Tribunal, Iran filed a claim for these funds, tying them up in litigation at the Tribunal.
“This is the latest of a series of important settlements reached over the past 35 years at the Hague Tribunal,” reads the US statement. “In constructive bilateral discussions, we arrived at a fair settlement to this claim, which due to litigation risk, remains in the best interests of the United States.”
Iran will receive the balance of $400 million in the Trust Fund, plus about a $1.3 billion compromise on the interest. “Iran’s recovery was fixed at a reasonable rate of interest and therefore Iran is unable to pursue a bigger Tribunal award against us, preventing US taxpayers from being obligated to a larger amount of money,” the State Dept. boasts.
All of the approximately 4,700 private US claims filed against the Government of Iran at the Tribunal were resolved during the first 20 years of the Tribunal, resulting in payments of more than $2.5 billion in awards to US nationals and companies through that process, according to the statement, which acknowledges that “there are still outstanding Tribunal claims, mostly by Iran against the US. We will continue efforts to address these claims appropriately.”
Then there’s Leibovitch v. Kerry, a suit filed by Shurat Hadin in the US District Court for the Southern District of New York, naming as defendants the US Department of State, Secretary of State John Kerry, and Secretary of the Treasury Jacob Lew, on behalf of a group of American victims of Iranian terrorism, who hold more than a billion dollars in court judgments against the Islamic Republic for its sponsorship of terrorist attacks. The suit was looking to enjoin the Obama administration from releasing the $100 billion in frozen Iranian assets at the conclusion of the nuclear deal with Iran. The plaintiffs claim that releasing the funds would preclude them from ever collecting on their judgments and deprive them of the only leverage they have to make Iran pay.
At this point, as the US has gone ahead and released the $100 billion to Iran, it would be interesting to see where this lawsuit may be headed.