A Moral Obligation

The United States still owes money to the families of 290 passengers who were killed when the guided-missile cruiser Vincennes shot down Iran Air Flight 655 in the Persian Gulf last summer. In May the Iranian government filed a suit with the International Court of Justice in The Hague to try to force the Bush Administration to pay up. Washington has yet to decide whether to take part in the legal proceeding.

The issue for the Administration is not whether to compensate families for the loss of relatives but how to make the payments. Shortly after the incident, President Reagan apologized and offered “ex gratia” compensation to relatives, a form of reparation that is considered humanitarian and implies no legal liability. There were two reasons for this decision. First, the U.S. government did not want to give money directly to the Iranian government because it could not be certain that families of the victims would actually receive the funds. The United States also wanted to avoid any action that would put it in the position of being culpable or legally liable for the deaths, having insisted from the beginning that the Vincennes’ firing on the airliner was a legally justifiable, if unfortunate, act of self-defense.

The Administration has yet to pay out any funds. One reason is that international compensation cases are complicated and usually take several years to resolve. This case is even more complex than usual. The United States has no diplomatic relations with Iran and has yet to find a third country that is willing to assume responsibility for distributing funds to victims’ families inside Iran.

Now the Iranian government is taking the United States to court. The suit raises the possibility that the court will find that the U.S. government is legally liable for the 290 deaths and rule that it must pay the Iranian government reparation for the aircraft as well as allow the Iranian government to distribute compensation to victims’ survivors. The Administration would obviously find such a ruling distasteful.

Still the United States should submit to the court’s jurisdiction and allow the case to betried in The Hague for a number of reasons.

First of all, the United States has a good case for justifiable self-defense. The Vincennes had engaged in battle with Iranian gunboats and had reason to expect an air attack. A trial would focus on the facts of the case, facts that do indicate that the shooting was an accident. This spring, for instance, the International Civil Aviation Organization, the international aviation branch of the United Nations, absolved the Vincennes and the U.S. government of any liability in the incident.

Second, it would help repair the United States’ damaged reputation in matters of international law. The International Court of Justice has no power to enforce rulings or even compel a party to answer a suit. Before 1985, the United States accepted World Court jurisdiction in all cases falling outside the jurisdiction of U.S. courts. That policy ended four years ago when the Reagan Administration refused to accept the court’s jurisdiction in the suit over mining Nicaraguan harbors. Last October the government changed its stand and initiated a new policy of submitting international disputes to the court. Answering Iran’s suit would make that policy believable and would improve the United States’ standing in the international community.

The United States filed suit against Iran in 1979 for seizing hostages in the American Embassy in Tehran; it cannot avoid the court’s jurisdiction now for no better reason than that Iran is the plaintiff.

The United States has already recognized a moral responsibility to make payments. If the United States were to lose the case before the court in The Hague, it would be required to accept legal liability and make the payments through the Iranian government and not directly to relatives. But it would also have demonstrated support for the rule of international law. The United States owes money to the families of victims, regardless of their country’s government. The Administration ought to remember that the moral fiber of a nation is judged not only by how it treats its allies but also by how it treats its enemies.