Sanctions of Iran’s ...
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At the same time, a 50% to 70% decline in international flight capacity, a doubling of ticket prices under inflationary conditions, the plight of patients requiring transfer abroad, disruption of the air transport chain for vital medicines, and the severance of family and academic ties demonstrate that this measure, in its true nature, constitutes a form of “tangible collective punishment”.
These objective facts confront Washington’s legal claims with a fundamental contradiction:
first, violation of sovereign independence and the principle of non-intervention. The extension of the effects of sanctions to airports, insurers, and service companies in third countries and the prevention of their permitted cooperation with Iran constitute a clear infringement upon the sovereignty of other states and a violation of the established principle of non-intervention in the domestic affairs of states (the subject of United Nations General Assembly Resolution 2625). This logic replaces the sovereign equality of states with financial weight and extraterritorial leverage.
Second, invalidity of the claim of “countermeasures”. Even if Washington justifies these measures within the framework of countermeasures, according to the articles on the responsibility of states for internationally wrongful acts (particularly Articles 50 and 51), these measures must, first, be “proportionate” to the alleged harm and, second, must never impair obligations pertaining to fundamental human rights and humanitarian norms. Imposing life-threatening risks on ordinary citizens to impose a political demand is a gross violation of the principle of proportionality and binding human rights norms.
Third, discrediting of formal exceptions in international jurisprudence. The International Court of Justice (ICJ), in its provisional order of October 3, 2018, explicitly obligated the United States to remove obstacles to the supply of parts, equipment, services, and financial payments related to the safety of Iran’s passenger aviation since the risk of irreparable harm to human lives is a matter for urgent judicial protection.
The US Treasury’s current claim of “case-by-case review of safety-related requests” constitutes a formal evasion of responsibility; an airplane part whose purchase is licensed on paper but the related banking path is blocked, or a license that becomes entangled in erosive bureaucratic complications, will never reach an aircraft in need of repair in the hangar. According to General Comment No. 8 of the United Nations Committee on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights, citizens must not pay the price of political rivalries by losing their subsistence rights, and the claim of the existence of humanitarian exceptions is admissible only if it leads in practice to “effective and timely access”.
The continuation of this policy, in addition to directly threatening the lives and health of people, imposes a chain of economic damage on tens of thousands of jobs in the aviation industry, tourism, and related services, and deepens the imposed isolation of the Iranian society. The legal solution is clear: The United States must be accountable for the foreseeable and catastrophic effects of this policy on the safety of passengers’ lives, and relevant institutions in Iran must also document all instances of refusal to provide services, navigation delays, and imposed risks so that the basis for attributing international responsibility and compensation for damages may be prepared.
International law possesses credibility only when it can set limits for the exercise of hegemonic power. Ordinary passengers are not collateral for political disputes. Financial power and the instrument of sanctions may be able to cancel a flight or ground an aircraft, but they can never create legal legitimacy for the systematic endangerment of human lives and safety.