Iranian President Hassan Rouhani on Thursday blamed “Zionist pressure groups” for a U.S. Supreme Court ruling he said could undermine the Iran nuclear deal, JTA reported.
“The lack of compliance of the United States with the JCPOA in the last several months represents a flawed approach,” Rouhani said at the UN General Assembly, using the acronym for the Joint Comprehensive Plan Of Action, the formal name for the nuclear deal his country signed with world powers last year.
“The latest case in point is the United States Supreme Court ruling to seize billions of dollars of the Iranian regime’s assets,” he added. “This demonstrated that the Zionist pressure groups could go as far as having the U.S. Congress pass offensive legislation forcing the highest judicial institution to uphold peremptory violations of international law.”
In April, the high court upheld a 2012 law that allows U.S. victims of Iran-backed terrorism to claim funds from the $2 billion in Bank Markazi’s assets held in the United States. Bank Markazi is Iran’s central bank.
Litigants include families of Marines killed in the 1983 Hezbollah attack on barracks in Beirut, and the Rubin family, whose family member was injured in a 1997 double suicide bombing on Ben Yehuda Street in Jerusalem.
Rouhani said such rulings should be seen as a “wrongful international act” in violation of the deal. READ MORE
