US-Iran Relations & the 1981 Algiers Accords: Decades of Violations

On 19 January 1981, the US signed an agreement with the Islamic Republic of Iran pledging to return tens of billions of dollars of illegally frozen assets and end interference in Iranian affairs, in exchange for release of its 52 nationals detained by Iran on capture of the US den of espionage into which the US embassy had virtually turned. The US never kept its promise, neither returning the Iranian money in the US, nor ending its plots against the Islamic Republic.

Stay with us for an investigative piece by Soraya Sepahpour-Ulrich in this regard titled: “US-Iran Relations and the 1981 Algiers Accords: Decades of Violations”.

This week marked the 37th anniversary of a pledge made by the United States in 1981 as follows: “The United States pledges that it is and from now on will be the policy of the United States not to intervene, directly or indirectly, politically or militarily, in Iran’s internal affairs.”

This week also marks 37 continuous years of the United States failing to uphold its pledge: the 1981 Algiers Accords.

Just how many people have heard of the 1981 Algiers Accords, a bilateral treaty signed on January 19, 1981 between the United States of America and the Islamic Republic of Iran?

Chances are, not many. Just as chances are that not many are fully aware of what actually led to the signing of this treaty.

In 1979, following the victory of the Islamic Revolution that overthrew the British-installed Shah, America’s strongman in Iran, plans were made to topple the new government in Tehran. In 1980, under the Carter administration, the United States began clandestine radio broadcasts into Iran from Egypt. The broadcasts called for Imam Khomeini’s overthrow and urged support for Shahpur Bakhtiar, the last prime minister of the Pahlavi regime. Other plans included the failed Neqab coup plot as well as plans for a possible American invasion of Iran using bases in Turkey.

The new Revolutionary government in Iran, with a look to the past and the 1953 British-CIA coup d’état that overthrew the government of Prime Minister Dr. Mohammad Mosaddeq and reinstalled the fugitive Shah, had good reason to believe that the United States was planning to abort the revolution in its nascent stages. Enthusiastic students took over the US embassy in Tehran on November 4, 1979, and put the diplomats in detention in order to prevent such plans from fruition.

These events led to the negotiation and conclusion the Algiers Accords, point 1 of which was the pledge by the United States not to intervene in Iran’s internal affairs in anyway. The Algiers Accords brought about the release of the American detainees and established the Iran–US Claims Tribunal at The Hague, in the Netherlands. The Tribunal ruled consistently “the Declarations were to be interpreted in accordance with the process of interpretation set out in the Vienna Convention on the Law of Treaties.”

A pledge is only as valid and worthy as the person making it. From the onset, the United States failed to uphold its own pledge. For instance, starting in 1982, the CIA provided $100,000 a month to a group in Paris styling itself the Front for the Liberation of Iran. The group headed by Ali Amini who had presided over the reversion of Iranian oil to foreign control after the CIA-backed coup in 1953. Additionally, the US provided support to two Iranian paramilitary groups based in Turkey, one of them headed by General Bahram Aryana, the former Shah’s army chief with close ties to Bakhtiar.

In 1986, the CIA went so far as to pirate Iran’s national television network frequency to transmit an address by the defunct Shah’s son, Reza Pahlavi, over Iranian TV. The support did not end there. Pahlavi had CIA funding for a number of years in the eighties. He solicited funds from the emir of Kuwait, the emir of Bahrain, the king of Morocco, and the ruling family of Saudi Arabia, all staunch US allies.  

In late 2002, Michael Ledeen joined Morris Amitay, vice-president of the Jewish Institute for National Security Affairs; ex-CIA head James Woolsey; former Reagan administration official Frank Gaffney; former senator Paul Simon; and oil consultant Rob Sobhani to set up a group called the Coalition for Democracy in Iran (CDI). In spite of his lack of charisma as a leader, in May, 2003, Michael Ledeen wrote a policy brief for the American Enterprise Institute Web site saying that Pahlavi would make a suitable leader for a transitional government. In August 2003, the Pentagon issued new guidelines – All meetings with Iranian anti-revolutionaries had to be cleared with Undersecretary of Defense for Policy Douglas Feith.

Concurrent with this direct interference, and in the following decade, Washington concentrated its efforts into putting a chokehold on the Iranian economy. A provision of the Algiers Accords was that “the United States will revoke all trade sanctions which were directed against Iran in the period November 4, 1979, to date.”

Embargoes and sanctions became the norm. Failing to interfere in Iran’s domestic affairs in order to topple the Islamic Republic through economic hardship, the United States once again turned up pressure through broadcasts and direct support for terrorists – in conjunction with economic sanctions.

This stranglehold was taking place while concurrently, and in violation of the Algiers Accords, the CIA front National Endowment for Democracy was providing funds to various groups, namely “Iran Teachers Association” (in 1991, 1992, 1993, 1994,2001, 2002, 2003); The Foundation for Democracy in Iran (FDI founded in 1995 by Kenneth R. Timmerman, Peter Rodman, Joshua Muravchik, and American intelligence officials), National Iranian American Council (NIAC) 2002, 2005, 2006), and others.  

Funds from NED to interfere in Iran continued after the signing of the JCPOA. The 2016 funding stood at well over $1m. 

In September 2000, Senators openly voiced support for the MKO Terror group – known as hypocrites in Iran for their treachery against the nation. Writing for The New Yorker, Connie Bruck revealed that:

“Israel is said to have had a relationship with the MKO at least since the late nineties, and to have supplied a satellite signal for MKO broadcasts from Paris into Iran.”

Perhaps their relationship with Israel and their usefulness explains why President Bush accorded the group ‘special persons status’.

During Washington’s illegal invasion and occupation of Iraq, the terrorist group got protection from the US troops in Iraq despite getting pressure from the Iraqi government to leave the country. In 2005, “a Farsi-speaking former CIA officer says he was approached by neoconservatives in the Pentagon who asked him to go to Iraq and oversee “MKO cross-border operations” into Iran.”

Moreover, according to Pakistani Intelligence, the United States secretly used yet another terrorist group – the Jundallah, stage a series of deadly attacks against Iran. The United States seems to have a soft spot for terrorists.

In addition to CIA funding and covert operations with help from terrorists, the United States actively used radio broadcasts into Iran to stir up unrest including Radio Farda and VOA Persian. It comes as no surprise then that the recipient of NED funds, NIAC, should encourage such broadcasts. Also, the BBC “received significant” sum of money from the US government to help combat the blocking of TV and internet services in countries including Iran and China.”

It is crucial to note that while the United States was conducting negotiations with Iran – as per the 5+1 group – which led to the signing of the Joint Comprehensive Plan Of Action (JCPOA), the MKO were delisted as a foreign terror organization. This provides them with the legitimacy to write opinion pieces in leading American papers.

Also important to note that during the JCPOA negotiations in which the United States participated as a party to an agreement, it was busy flouting the Treaty with its broadcasts into Iran. But the violation was not limited to broadcasts. Item B of the 1981 Algiers Treaty’s preamble states: “Through the procedures provided in the declaration relating to the claims settlement agreement, the United States agrees to terminate all legal proceedings in United States courts involving claims of United States persons and institutions against Iran and its state enterprises, to nullify all attachments and judgments obtained therein, to prohibit all further litigation based on such claims, and to bring about the termination of such claims through binding arbitration.”

Unsurprisingly, the US again failed to keep its pledge and a partisan legislation allocated millions for the former detainees.

The United States clearly felt bound by the Treaty for it recognized Point 2. Of the Algiers Accords when in January 2016 Iran received its funds frozen by the US in a settlement at the Hague – perhaps for no other reason than to pacify Iran post JCPOA while finding the means to re-route Iran’s money back into American hands.

It would require a great deal of time and verse to cite every instance and detail of United States of America’s violation of a Treaty, of its pledge, for the past 37 years. But never has its attitude been more brazen in refusing to uphold its pledge and its open violation of international law than when President Donald Trump openly voiced his support for protests in Iran and called for overthrow of the government. The US then called an emergency UNSC meeting on January 5, 2018 to demand that the UN interfere in Iran’s internal affairs.

America’s history clearly demonstrates that it has no regard for international law and treaties. Its pledge is meaningless. International law is a tool for America that does not apply to itself. This is a well-documented fact – and perhaps none has realized this better than the North Korean leader – Kim Jong-un.

AS/MG