Iran court orders US to pay $12.6 billion in damages to thalassemia patients

An Iranian court has ruled that the United States must pay for damages inflicted on thalassemia patients after Washington deprived them of access to vital medicine as a result of draconian sanctions reinstated following its withdrawal from a landmark deal with Tehran in 2018.

The 55th branch of the court dealing with international affairs in Tehran’s Imam Khomeini Judicial Complex issued a ruling on Wednesday after 438 thalassemia patients filed a lawsuit against 17 natural and legal persons of the US administration involved in imposing medicine-related sanctions on the Islamic Republic.

The court’s verdict sentenced the US government and officials to pay material, moral and punitive damages amounting to $12.615 billion to the plaintiffs.

“Since the onset of secondary sanctions and the imposition of pharmaceutical sanctions, in the absence of original and high-quality drugs, they (the thalassemia patients) were inevitably supplied with low-quality medicines and suffered severe complications, and consequently faced a lot of treatment costs,” the court said.

“In fact, the lack of the required medicines for thalassemia patients led to an increase in these patients’ drug allergy and exacerbation of pain and suffering caused by the use of other drugs.”

The verdict also pointed to the destructive effects of drugs, including physiological and psychological suffering and damages that have been inflicted on the patients themselves and their relatives, in a way that has caused limitations in the patient's social relations, such as attending school, and limitations in the job opportunities that they could have obtained.

“The unilateral sanctions of the United States, which have indiscriminately subjected the population ‘in need of protection’ to loss of life, including deprivation of the right to life or physical harm, are a clear example of criminal acts against the civilian population, which also institute civil liability for them,” the court underlined.

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Thalassemia is an inherited blood disorder that causes the body to have less hemoglobin than normal. Hemoglobin enables red blood cells to carry oxygen. The disease afflicts people from birth and requires specialized medication to eliminate overload during blood transfusions.

According to the experts, the supply of required medications from the Swiss pharmaceutical group Novartis, which is the leading supplier, and key ingredients for these medicines produced by the French company Roquette Frères has been denied to Iran.

The United States under President Donald Trump reinstated crippling sanctions on Iran after unilaterally walking out of the 2015 nuclear deal in May 2018, despite Tehran's full compliance with the terms of the agreement, officially known as the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA). 

The sanctions have been choking up the financial channels that could be used for providing Iran with essential medicine, material, or medical equipment.

Although Washington and its Western allies claim that humanitarian goods are exempted from sanctions, tens of thousands of patients in Iran have over the years died or developed critical ailments due to the unavailability of essential drugs. 

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