On March 9, the U.S. District Court in the southern district of New York reached a default judgment ordering Iran to pay some $10 billion to the relatives of victims of the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, as well as to an insurance company. A default judgment is not a determination of guilt, or even a finding on the merits. But the ruling hints at one of the myriad risks of empowering an unpredictable regime with a violently anti-American ideological bent.
This is a uniquely awkward time for a plaintiff to raise even the possibility of Iranian liability for the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks and to reach no meaningful conclusion. The United States is currently scrapping nearly all of its remaining sanctions against Iran as part of last year’s landmark nuclear deal—moves that could soon give the Islamic Republic access to the U.S. financial system and eventually strip nearly all uranium enrichment limits on the country’s nuclear program within the next 15 years.