TEHRAN -- An Iranian court has ruled that the United States must pay $330 million in damages to the families of the martyrs of the abortive Nojeh coup d’etat in Iran.
The verdict was issued following complaints filed by the survivors and victims of the Nojeh Coup in July 2022 against the U.S. government and seven other defendants.
The criminal proceedings culminated in a ruling that convicted the United States of “planning and executing” the failed coup.
Mizan news agency, affiliated with the Iranian Judiciary, said that after hearing the arguments of the survivors of the plot and their lawyer, the court ruled that the U.S. government must pay $30 million for the “material and moral” damage it caused the plaintiffs and $300 in “punitive damages.”
“Therefore, the U.S. government has to pay a total of $330 million in financial fines and compensation to the families of the martyrs of the Nojeh coup,” the verdict concluded.
The Nojeh coup plot was a plan to overthrow the newly established Islamic Republic of Iran and its leader the late Imam Khomeini after the collapse of the U.S.-backed Pahlavi regime.
The plan involved the Iranian army’s officers and servicemen from the infantry, air force and intelligence service, and was largely halted by the arrest of hundreds of officers on 9–10 July 1980 at Nojeh Air Base, near the western city of Hamadan.
Back in 2017, the Islamic Revolution’s Documents Center revealed that the U.S. had played a main role in designing and implementing the Nojeh coup plot in Iran in 1980.
The revelation came after the confessions made by Nasser Rokni, a pilot, who had collaborated with the coup plotters. Rokni admitted in his confessions to the U.S. role in the coup and its “financial assistance” to the coup plotters in Iran.