United States Secretary of State Michael Pompeo on Wednesday announced that the US is terminating its 1955 Treaty of Amity with Iran, AP reported. The agreement had set terms of economic relations and consular rights between Washington and Tehran.
Pompeo said the decision to terminate the deal was “decades overdue” and accused Iran of misusing the International Court of Justice for political and propaganda purposes.
The development follows a International Court of Justice order earlier on Wednesday that asked Washington to lift restrictions on Tehran and avoid impacting humanitarian aid or civil aviation safety. The court had cited that the sanctions were in violation of the 1955 treaty.
Pompeo said that the US has already exempted humanitarian goods from the sanctions. “The court’s ruling today was a defeat for Iran,” Pompeo told reporters, according to AFP. “It rightly rejected all of Iran’s baseless requests.”
In May, Trump pulled the US out of a nuclear agreement that the administration of former President Barack Obama had signed with Iran, calling it “decaying and rotten”. In August, the US president reimposed sanctions on the Islamic republic.
In July, Iran moved the International Court of Justice and alleged that the US sanctions had violated the treaty. The court, in a preliminary ruling, said Washington must “remove, by means of its choosing, any impediments arising from” sanctions on export of medicines and medical devices, food and agricultural commodities and spare parts and equipment necessary to ensure the safety of civil aviation.
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