Virendra Pandit
New Delhi: An Iranian court has ordered the United States to pay USD 50 billion for “assassinating” top General Qasem Suleimani in 2020.
Iran and Washington have had no diplomatic relations since the aftermath of the 1979 revolution. Ever since the two countries have been at loggerheads on diverse issues and vowed to destroy each other.
According to the media reports, then-US president Donald Trump had allegedly ordered a drone strike near Baghdad airport that killed General Qasem Soleimani, 62, and his Iraqi lieutenant Abu Mahdi al-Muhandis on January 3, 2020.
A Tehran court has now ordered the US government to pay nearly USD 50 billion in damages for assassinating the top Iranian general nearly four years ago.
Days after the killings, Iran retaliated by firing missiles at bases in Iraq housing American and its coalition troops. No US personnel were killed but Washington said dozens suffered traumatic brain injuries.
The Tehran court ‘sentenced’ the US government to pay USD 49.7 billion in “material, moral and punitive damage” after a lawsuit filed by more than 3,300 Iranians.
The court found 42 individuals and legal persons guilty, including Trump, the US government, former Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, and former Defense Secretary Mark Esper.
General Soleimani commanded the Quds Force, the foreign operations arm of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps. He was among the country’s most popular public figures who spearheaded Iran’s Middle East operations and was seen as a hero of the 1980-88 Iran-Iraq war.
Last month, an Iranian court ordered the US government to pay USD 420 million in compensation to victims of an abortive 1980 operation to free hostages held at the US embassy in Tehran.
In August, a Tehran court demanded Washington pay USD 330 million in damages for “planning a coup” in 1980 against the fledgling Islamic Republic.
Those suits follow a series of multi-billion-dollar compensation rulings against Tehran by US courts, the media reported.
In 2016, the US Supreme Court ordered that Iranian assets frozen in the United States should be paid to victims of attacks Washington has blamed on Tehran, including the 1983 bombing of a US Marine barracks in Beirut and a 1996 blast in Saudi Arabia.
Tehran denied all responsibility for the attacks. It appealed to international justice to help unlock the funds of several Iranian individuals and companies that have been frozen by Washington.
In March the International Court of Justice ruled that Washington’s freezing of funds was “manifestly unreasonable”.
But it ruled it had no jurisdiction to unblock nearly USD 2 billion in Iranian central bank assets frozen by the United States.