In 2016, Iran had filed a formal complaint with the court to recover nearly $2 billion in assets frozen in the United States. The US Supreme Court ruled in April that the assets must be turned over to American families of people killed in the 1983 bombing of a US Marine Corps barracks in Beirut and other attacks blamed on Iran.
After the April supreme court ruling, Caragh Fay, a lawyer representing the victims of the Beirut attack, had said it could take from three months to a year for the funds to be dispersed to plaintiffs.
The assets held in New York were part of Iran’s foreign currency reserves. They were traced to a Citibank account in New York held by Luxemburg-based Clearstream Banking, which acted as a intermediary for Banca UBAE, an Italian bank of which the Iranian central bank, Bank Markazi, is a customer, Financial Tribune reported.
ICJ last Wednesday reprimanded the US over its re-imposition of sanctions on Iran, ordering Washington to lift restrictive measures linked to humanitarian trade, food, medicine and civil aviation.
The Hague ruling was a victory for Iran after it complained to the ICJ in July that the return to sanctions imposed by Donald Trump following the US withdrawal from the 2015 landmark nuclear agreement was in violation of the Treaty of Amity, a 1955 pre-revolutionary friendship treaty.