https://www.yahoo.com/news/iran-sue-us-over-court-seizure-2-bn-100952730.html?ref=gsTehran (AFP) - Iran is preparing international legal action to recover nearly $2 billion that the US Supreme Court has ordered be paid as compensation to American victims of terror attacks, President Hassan Rouhani said on Tuesday.
"We will soon take the case of the $2 billion to the international court," Rouhani said in a televised speech.
"We will not allow the United States to swallow this money so easily," the president said to a crowd of thousands in the southeastern city of Kerman.
The US Supreme Court ruled on April 20 that Iran must hand nearly $2 billion in frozen central bank assets to the survivors and relatives of those killed in attacks it has been accused of organising.
The attacks include the 1983 bombing of a US Marine barracks in Beirut and the 1996 Khobar Towers bombing in Saudi Arabia.
The Supreme Court ruling affects some 1,000 Americans.
It came despite hopes for better relations between Tehran and Washington, after a landmark nuclear deal last July between Iran and major powers led by the United States.
UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon has said he is ready to help settle the dispute over the assets, but only if both governments make that request.
Why does this not suprise me that Obama has opened the States into more debt by attempting to play peacekeeper.
Meanwhile they are doing this about it:
http://www.wsj.com/articles/kerry-tries-to-drum-up-some-business-in-europe-for-iran-1462902185Kerry Tries to Drum Up Some Business in Europe for Iran
LONDON—U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry said Tuesday that European businesses should not use U.S. sanctions on Iran as an excuse for avoiding business with Tehran.
Mr. Kerry’s comments, just ahead of meetings with European banking leaders here Thursday, were part of the Obama administration’s moves recently to help integrate Iran into the global economic system after decades of punitive sanctions.
Six world powers agreed last year to lift international sanctions in return for curbs on Iran’s nuclear program. But since the deal formally took effect in January, Iranian officials have complained that they are not seeing the results of the sanction relief swiftly enough. Although the U.S. played a major role in the nuclear deal, U.S. sanctions related to human rights and terrorism remain in place on broad sectors of Iran’s economy.
Mr. Kerry told reporters traveling with him Tuesday that the U.S. “sometimes gets used as an excuse in this process” by business executives who fear that U.S. would frown on deals with Iran.
“If they don’t see a good business deal, they shouldn’t say, ‘Oh, we can’t do it because of the United States.’ That’s just not fair. That’s not accurate,” Mr. Kerry said.
The secretary is here through Thursday for an anticorruption summit and diplomatic meetings. He will meet with European banking leaders to “address their concerns about conducting business with Iran” after the 2015 Iran nuclear deal, a U.S. official said.
In New York last month, Iranian Foreign Minister Javad Zarif pressed Mr. Kerry and other U.S. officials to do more to reassure other countries that they could do business with Iran without penalty.
“Iran has a right to the benefits of the agreement they signed up to and if people, by confusion or misinterpretation or in some cases disinformation, are being misled, it’s appropriate for us to try to clarify that,” Mr. Kerry said.
But he suggested that U.S. sanctions aren’t the only force slowing Tehran’s access to relief. He said he aims in meetings with bankers here to spell out what is permissible under U.S. law.
Mr. Kerry said that as long as business partners don't include explicitly sanctioned Iranian firms and individuals, European banks “are absolutely free to open accounts for Iran, trade and exchange money, facilitate a legitimate business agreement, bankroll it, lend money—all those things are absolutely open.”
Iran remains a challenging business environment, both because of remaining U.S. sanctions and because of its banking system. An international standards body combating money laundering and terrorist financing, called the Financial Action Task Force, deemed Iran “a serious threat to the integrity of the global financial system” in February, its most recent assessment of the country since the nuclear deal took effect.
Political uncertainty in the U.S. also could play a part in European banks’ approach to Iran. The Democratic front-runner in the presidential campaign, Hillary Clinton, has said she supports the Iranian nuclear deal, but with caveats, and would consider adding sanctions if Iran came close to obtaining a nuclear weapon.
Donald Trump, the presumptive Republican nominee, has harshly criticized the Obama administration’s negotiating of the deal but hasn’t pledged to reverse it, as other Republicans have. He has said he’d try to renegotiate its terms and has called for tough enforcement to make sure Tehran doesn’t violate the accord.
Mr. Kerry said Tuesday he has heard from banks that they are concerned about so-called secondary sanctions, or punishment for doing business with a sanctioned entity, and not whether a new president would reverse the nuclear deal.
Anyone else smelling backfire with this current agenda?
