While US officials claim they are earnestly seeking a new nuclear deal and even a treaty with the Islamic Republic of Iran, they are busy scrapping old treaties that have endured for decades and spanned half a dozen US presidents, two different governments in Iran, a hostage crisis and the bombing of a civilian airliner.

On Oct. 3, Secretary of State Mike Pompeo announced that the United States would be terminating the Treaty of Amity with Iran, calling it “39 years overdue.” Formally known as The Treaty of Amity, Economic Relations, and Consular Rights Between the United States of America and Iran, it was signed in 1955 in Tehran under President Dwight Eisenhower and Iran’s king at the time, Mohammad Reza Shah, who ruled the country until 1979.

While the Islamic Republic of Iran and the United States formally severed ties in 1980 after the 1979 Islamic Revolution and the Iran hostage crisis in which 52 American diplomats in Tehran were held for 444 days, the treaty established that the top United Nations court — the International Court of Justice (ICJ) — be used to settle disputes. The ICJ had previously been used by both the United States after the hostage crisis and by Iran after a US warship shot down an Iranian commercial airliner in the Persian Gulf in 1988.

The US decision to leave the treaty, however, was prompted after the ICJ ruled in favor of Iran regarding US sanctions, which were applied against the country after the United States pulled out of the Iranian nuclear deal, formally known as the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA). Pending the finalization of its review of Iran's demand that the United States lift sanctions and pay compensation for damages, the ICJ ruled that the United States should lift sanctions on humanitarian goods such as food and medicine as well as spare parts for civilian aircraft.