An international court Wednesday ruled Iran can proceed with a bid to unfreeze assets in the United States, rejecting Washington’s claims the case must be halted because of Tehran’s alleged support for international terrorism.
Washington had argued that Iran’s “unclean hands”—a reference to Tehran’s suspected backing of terror groups—should disqualify its lawsuit to recover USD 2 billion in assets frozen by the US Supreme Court in 2016.
But the International Court of Justice in The Hague threw out the US challenges, and said that it had the right to hold full hearings at a later date as to whether Tehran will get the money back.
Chief judge Abdulqawi Ahmed Yusuf said the UN’s top court “unanimously rejects the preliminary objections to admissibility raised by the United States of America.”
The court also “finds that it has jurisdiction” in the case, Yusuf said at the end of an hour-long reading of the decision.