UK top court ruling threatens Western sanctions against Iran: article

TEHRAN,June 22(MNA) – Western government sanctions against Iran suffered a big setback on Wednesday when Britain’s top court ruled that the government was wrong to have imposed sanctions on the biggest Iranian private bank over alleged links to Tehran’s nuclear program, Reuters wrote in an article published on the same day. The Bank Mellat case and 50 more like it pending at the European Union’s General Court have cast a cloud over the future of EU sanctions and alarmed Washington, which relies on European support to throttle Iran’s links to the global economy in hopes of getting it to curb its pursuit of nuclear power. The British Supreme Court decision on Wednesday echoed a January ruling by the EU’s General Court, which overturned sanctions imposed in 2010, and paves the way for Bank Mellat to sue Britain for damages. Europe and the United States have imposed sanctions against specific Iranian people, state institutions or companies in so far unavailing efforts to persuade Tehran to rein in enrichment of uranium and open up to UN inspectors in exchange for phased relief from the tightening noose of financial isolation. Western nations claim Iran may be developing the capability to build nuclear weapons, though it says the program is for domestic power generation and medical purposes. Sanctions have negatively affected Iran’s ability to export oil and have largely severed the country off from the global financial network. However, Iran has found some resourceful ways of working around sanctions to keep some exports flowing and prevent a catastrophic drain of foreign exchange reserves. Iran’s shipping industry has also been pursuing a series of challenges at the EU General Court in Luxembourg and at Britain’s High Court over sanctions designations, hoping that positive rulings for other Iranian firms will help their cases. “In relation to the Bank Mellat case and other cases, the decisions have been very encouraging. These have been good decisions - all of which are supporting our case,” said Maryam Taher, a London-based lawyer representing all of the Iranian shipping related parties. The United States has raised concerns that the Iranian appeals to European courts could loosen sanctions against Tehran. A campaign by U.S. pressure group United Against Nuclear Iran (UANI), whose board includes former U.S. ambassadors and former CIA and British intelligence chiefs, has led several foreign companies in sectors including shipping to exit Iran. UANI chief executive Mark Wallace, a former U.S. ambassador to the UN, said the appeals “would set a troubling precedent”. “The EU and its member countries and citizens must make clear that Iran business is unacceptable and illegal — that was the very point of the sanctions,” Wallace told Reuters.