Secretary of State Mike Pompeo announced that America will terminate the 1955 treaty of amity with Iran after the International Court of Justice (ICJ) used the treaty to force the US to ease some sanctions against Iran.
This treaty “regulates and promotes economic and diplomatic ties between the two countries.” You can read the full text of it here.
From Fox News:
The International Court of Justice (ICJ) ruled earlier Wednesday that the U.S. must lift sanctions that affect the import of humanitarian goods and products and services linked to the safety of civil aviation. Iran had alleged that the sanctions breach the 1955 bilateral agreement known as the Treaty of Amity, from when the two countries had good relations, that regulates and promotes economic and diplomatic ties between the two countries.The ICJ, ruling from the Hague, said in a preliminary decision that the U.S. must “remove, by means of its choosing, any impediments arising from” sanctions that affect exports to Iran of medicine, medical devices, food, agricultural commodities and equipment necessary to ensure the safety of civil aviation. The U.S. had argued that the sanctions cannot be challenged at the ICJ because it is a matter of national security. The court’s president, Abdulqawi Ahmed Yusuf, said that the case will continue and the U.S. could challenge the court’s jurisdiction.
Pompeo blasted Iran’s lawsuit against America and claimed the regime attempted “to interfere with the sovereign rights of the United States to take lawful actions necessary to protect our national security and abusing the ICJ for political and propaganda purposes.”
Pompeo then said that terminating the amity treaty “is a decision frankly that is 39 years overdue” since officials should have taken this action after the 1979 Iranian revolution.
The secretary did find one silver lining:
“The court denied Iran’s attempt to secure broad measures to interfere with U.S. sanctions and rightly noted Iran’s history of non-compliance with its international obligations under the treaty of non-proliferation of nuclear weapons,” he said. He also said that there are existing exemptions for humanitarians purposes in the sanctions regime.
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