Whose Side is the State Department On?

BY: THE HILL


In January 2011, the State Department unilaterally expanded non-humanitarian travel and remittances to Cuba, despite an American hostage being held by the Castro regime.

This has resulted in trips featuring salsa dancing, cigar factory tours, baseball games and even visits with the Castro regime's neighborhood repression committees (CDR's, Committee for the Defense of the Revolution).

Just prior to that, the Justice Department -- at the behest of the State Department -- intervened on behalf of the Castro regime and its business partners against a U.S. citizen who was trying to collect a 2001 judgment awarded to her by a U.S. court in a suit against the Castro regime.

And now, the State Department has similarly intervened in a suit by former American hostages against the Iranian regime.

Here's an excerpt from former American hostage Moorehead Kennedy's recent editorial in Politico:

Congress has passed various statutes, allowing US nationals, victimized by terrorism, to obtain compensation for injuries. Literally hundreds have pursued claims in U.S. courts and received compensation for terrorism sponsored by Iran, Saddam Hussein’s Iraq, Cuba, Sudan, North Korea and Libya.

The Tehran embassy hostages also sought to pursue similar claims in U.S. Courts. In August 2001, we obtained a judgment against Iran — which had refused to appear to defend their indefensible conduct. But the State Department intervened to protect Iran’s interests, asserting that dismissal was necessary to protect U.S. national security interests and uphold the waiver of claims in the Algiers Accords.

Though Congress later enacted numerous statutes (some specifying that the State Department’s position did not reflect the official views of the U.S. government, while others confirmed our right to pursue our claims), the court ultimately granted the department’s motion.

In the next 10 years, all our appeals, and other efforts to obtain justice and compensation, have been defeated by the State Department. At the same time, the department has aggressively protected the rights of all U.S. corporations and banks to seek compensation from Iran. Indeed each claim has been adjudicated, and literally billions of dollars awarded, through these channels and paid by Iran.

The signal that Iran has drawn from this is clear – the U.S. cares about protecting interests of its corporations — but has no real interest in protecting its diplomats, no matter the State Department’s lip service about to the importance of diplomatic immunity and the sacrosanct status of our embassies.