US terminates 1955 treaty with Iran after UN court ruling

WASHINGTON (AP) — In response to a U.N. court order that the U.S. lift sanctions on Iran, the Trump administration said Wednesday it was terminating a decades-old treaty affirming friendly relations between the two countries. This is a breaking story and may be updated...

After the International Court of Justice (ICJ) on Wednesday ruled the Trump administration's sanctions against Iran violate the 1955 Treaty of Amity, Secretary of State Mike Pompeo "impetuously" declared at a morning press conference that the United States will terminate the decades-old bilateral agreement rather than comply with the United Nations court's order to ease sanctions. "The Iranians have been ignoring it for an awfully long time, we ought to have pulled out of it decades ago," he told reporters at the State Department. Its first article reads: “There shall be firm and enduring peace and sincere friendship between the United States of America and Iran.”

The treaty survived the 1979 overthrow of the Shah in Iran’s Islamic revolution and the subsequent hostage crisis that crippled American-Iranian relations for decades. Pompeo said Iran was misusing the court for political purposes and that the United States was actively ensuring that humanitarian aid reaches the country, without regard to the court ruling. “We’re disappointed that the court failed to recognise that it has no jurisdiction to issue any order relating to these sanctions with the United States, which is doing its work on Iran to protect its own essential security interests,” Pompeo said. “We’re disappointed that the court failed to recognize that it has no jurisdiction to issue any order relating to these sanctions measures with the United States.”

The ruling said Washington must “remove, by means of its choosing, any impediments arising from” the re-imposition of sanctions to the export to Iran of medicine and medical devices, food and agricultural commodities and spare parts and equipment necessary to ensure the safety of civil aviation. The ruling earlier in the day by the Hague-based court had stated U.S. assurances that the sanctions would not negatively impact humanitarian aid and aviation safety "were not adequate." Iran alleges that the sanctions imposed by the Trump administration after its withdrawal from a 2015 nuclear deal with Iran violated the so-called Treaty of Amity. Associated Press writers Susannah George in Washington and Mike Corder in The Hague, Netherlands, contributed to this report.
U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo says that the United States is terminating the 1955 Treaty of Amity with Iran.