THE HAGUE: The United States and Iran went to the World Court yesterday in a bid to end a 10-year legal battle over competing compensation claims linked to attacks on oil platforms and ships during the Iran-Iraq war.
Iran filed a claim against the US at the World Court in late 1992, accusing US warships of destroying three Iranian oil platforms in the Gulf in 1987 and 1988. In 1996 the US filed a counterclaim for damages to maritime trade.
The dispute reflected decades of distrust between the two countries. Iran once branded the US "The Great Satan". US President Bush last year said Iran was part of an "axis of evil", along with Iraq and North Korea.
Iran fought an eight-year war against Iraq in the 1980s in which one million people were killed. Iran accused the US of supporting Iraqi President Saddam Hussein in that war.
"Ironic as it may seem in today's circumstances, the US actively supported Iraq: the aggressor state," Iran's representative, Mr Mohammad Hossein Zahedin-Labbaf, told judges at the United Nations top court in the Dutch city of The Hague.
"At the time of those attacks in 1987 and 1988, Iran had been engaged in a long and bloody conflict. Iran had been forced into a war and the extension of the conflict into the Persian Gulf in circumstances for which we bore no responsibility," said Mr Zahedin-Labbaf.
Iran's claim, filed in November 1992 at the World Court, is based on the destruction by US warships of three offshore oil production complexes owned by the National Iranian Oil Company on October 19th, 1987, and April 18th, 1988.
The US filed a counterclaim for damages in 1996, accusing Tehran of attacking ships and laying mines in the Gulf which was damaging for maritime commerce.
"In attacking vessels, laying mines in the Gulf and otherwise engaging in military actions in 1987-88 that were dangerous and detrimental to maritime commerce, the Islamic Republic of Iran breached its obligations to the United States," the US said.
The dispute stems from the final stages of the Iran-Iraq war, when then US president Ronald Reagan reregistered 11 Kuwaiti oil tankers under the American flag to give them US Navy protection from Iranian attack.
At the time, Iran viewed Kuwait as a belligerent because it aided Iraq financially and let arms bound for Iraq enter through Kuwaiti ports. The Gulf became a flashpoint which pitted the US against Iran.
Washington broke diplomatic ties with Iran in the aftermath of the 1979 Islamic Revolution after radical students stormed the former US embassy in Tehran and held Americans hostage.
Judges at the World Court - also known as the International Court of Justice - will hear arguments from both sides until March 7th.
The US opens its arguments on Friday.