Baku, Azerbaijan, Apr. 25
By Fatih Karimov - Trend:
Iran thinks that the US government responsible for protecting Iran's assets in that country, Mohammad Javad Zarif, the Iranian foreign minister said.
Speaking at a joint press conference with Macedonian counterpart Nikola Poposki on a visit to Iran, Zarif said that Iran does not recognize the recent verdict of a US court on its assets, Iran's state-run IRINN TV reported Apr. 25.
The US Supreme Court last week ruled the transfer of nearly $2 billion of frozen Iranian assets to the American victims of terrorist attacks, including the 1983 truck bombing of a Marine Corps barracks in the Lebanese capital of Beirut. Investigators of the court concluded that Iran was responsible for that attack, which Tehran has denied.
The assets belong to the Central Bank of Iran (CBI), blocked under the US sanctions.
The verdict is against international laws, Zarif said, adding Tehran will spare no effort to prevent the US to gain access to its assets.
"Iran will pursue the issue via legal channels," he added.
"We have announced that the US government is responsible to protect Iran's assets, and if they fail, Iran will claim compensation in due time," Zarif said.
He further said that the Iranian government has established a special committee to consider the issue.
The committee will investigate the reason of the former government's making investments recklessly in a way that US can block that, the way of Iran's ability to prevent reoccurrence of the similar issues in the future and "encroaching on Iran's assets".
The CBI President Valiollah Seif said Apr. 24 that the former government is the one that is actually responsible for the recent US blockade of Iranian assets.
The former government of Iran paved the way for the court ruling by being ignorant of the facts while buying bonds and making investment in dollar, Seif said.
"If the bonds which had been valued in the dollar hadn't been bought with the indirect brokerage of Americans, there would not have been any money for the US to block," he added.