Iran court fines US $420m for 1980 terror attack
An Iranian court ordered the US government on Thursday to pay $420 million in compensation to victims of an abortive 1980 operation to free Americans held at the US Embassy, the judiciary said.
Shortly after Iranians toppled the shah during the 1979 Islamic Revolution, Iranian students stormed the US Embassy in Tehran and arrested more than 50 Americans, AFP reported.
In April 1980, Washington attempted to free the Americans in the top-secret Operation Eagle Claw, which ended in disaster after running into sandstorms and mechanical problems. As the rescue force withdrew, two US aircraft collided, killing eight servicemen. In its Thursday report, the judiciary’s Mizan Online news agency said that during the operation US forces had “attacked” a bus carrying Iranian passengers.
“Following the complaint filed by families of the victims of US Operation Eagle Claw, a court ordered the US government to pay $420 million,” Mizan reported.
Thirteen survivors of the terror attack as well as one of the hostages who was taken by the US forces in the desert filed a lawsuit against the US government.
The court ruled that the US government must pay $140 million for the “material and moral” damage it caused the plaintiffs and $280 million in “punitive damages”.
Five months after the crisis, Washington severed diplomatic relations and imposed an embargo on Tehran.
The Americans were released in January 1981.
In August, a Tehran court ordered the US government to pay $330 million in damages for “planning a coup” in 1980 against the Islamic Republic. The suits filed against Washington in Iranian courts follow a series of multi-billion dollar compensation awards made against Tehran by US courts. 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.
In March this year, the International Court of Justice ruled that Washington’s freezing of funds belonging to several Iranian individuals and companies was “manifestly unreasonable”.