Parliament Weighing Action on US Plan to Seize Iran’s Assets: Speaker
TEHRAN (Tasnim) – Iranian Parliament Speaker Ali Larijani likened Washington’s possible decision to confiscate the country’s assets in US banks to a “robbery”, saying the legislature is considering plans to react to any such move.
It will be a cruel measure if the US seizes Iran’s assets under spurious pretexts, Larijani said at an open session of the parliament on Monday.
“It is really similar to a robbery,” the speaker added, stressing that there will definitely be a response to such a move by Washington.
The warning came in reaction to reports that the US Supreme Court is considering a case to confiscate the Iranian Central Bank’s assets in the US to pay the American victims of terrorist attacks allegedly linked to the Iranian government.
The US House of Representatives is now weighing in on a pending case that accuses Iran of links with the 1983 bombing of the Marine barracks in Beirut and the 1996 bombing of the Khobar Towers in Saudi Arabia.
The US lawmakers are trying to force Iran’s Central Bank to pay damages to over 1,300 American plaintiffs. In 2008, the victims discovered that Iran’s Central Bank had almost $2 billion stored in Citibank accounts in New York. The victims sued for that money, and the litigation has now reached the Supreme Court.
