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Iran pursues legal channels to take back frozen assets: 1st VP

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Iran’s First Vice President Es’haq Jahangiri slams a ruling by the Supreme Court of the United States granting about two billion dollars in frozen Iranian assets to the families of victims of a 1983 bombing in Beirut.

“The Iranian administration will definitely use all legal means to regain the fund and the US knows that the administration can do that,” Jahangiri said in a meeting with managing directors of Iranian state and private banks on Saturday.

The court on April 20 ruled that about USD 2 billion in frozen Iranian assets must be turned over to American families of people killed in the 1983 bombing of a US Marine Corps barracks in the Lebanese capital of Beirut and other attacks blamed on Iran.

Jahangiri said the US court’s decision amounted to stealing the Central Bank of Iran (CBI)’s funds which had mainly been kept in European banks.

He added that the US carried out such a measure under a baseless excuse and made an accusation against Iran.

Iranian Foreign Ministry spokesman, Hossein Jaberi Ansari, said on April 21 that the ruling has mocked international law, adding that it “amounts to appropriation of the Islamic Republic of Iran’s property” in the United States.

In 2012, the US Congress passed a law that specifically directed the US-based Citibank to turn over the Iranian assets to families of victims of the Beirut bombing.

Iran argues that Congress is intruding into the business of federal courts over the case. Tehran has long rejected allegations of involvement in the Beirut bombing.

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