The UN’s top court ordered the United States Wednesday to lift sanctions on humanitarian goods for Iran in a stunning setback for US President Donald Trump.
The International Court of Justice (ICJ) in The Hague handed Iran a major victory, saying that the stinging economic sanctions put Iranian lives at risk.
The ruling is likely to rile Trump, who reimposed the sanctions in May after pulling out of Iran’s international nuclear deal to the dismay of his allies.
But it was unclear whether the judgment will be anything more than symbolic, because both Washington and Tehran have ignored them in the past.
The ICJ judges ruled that the sanctions on some goods breached a 1955 “Treaty of Amity” between Iran and the US that predates Iran’s Islamic Revolution.
