You have to have a character to defame

posted at 8:30 am on June 5, 2008 by Ed Morrissey
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The Islamist state of Iran has a long history of murder, terrorism, and war. Now they may take their fight to a new venue: Western courtrooms. The Iranian representative to the IAEA threatened lawsuits against Western nations that defamed Iran by bringing action against them at the UN:

Iran is threatening to sue countries that it says have damaged its reputation and pushed to have U.N. Security Council involvement in its nuclear program.

It is also accusing the United States of pressuring the International Atomic Energy Agency to base its latest probe of Iran’s nuclear program on fake evidence suggesting Tehran has tried to make nuclear arms.

The comments were made Thursday to the 35-nation board of the IAEA by Ali Ashgar Soltanieh, Iran’s chief delegate to the agency.

The problem with bringing defamation suits is that one has to prove that their reputation suffered damage. Iran, the top terrorist-supporting nation in the world, has precious little reputation to injure. They were known as a nation run by fanatics and psychopaths long before they tried developing nuclear weapons, which is why that effort creates so much risk for the region and the world.

However, the discovery process would be fun, wouldn’t it? After all, if Iran wants to sue the US in any jurisdiction we recognize, we could demand access to facilities and documents to test the prosecution of their claims. A failure of Iran to comply would leave the mullahcrats somewhat embarrassed by their own ploy.

Iran won’t bother to try lawsuits as a means of intimidation; this threat is nothing more than a schoolyard taunt by a bully whose bluff has been called. It does show a measure of desperation as the IAEA and the UN become increasingly unfriendly towards Tehran due to Iranian intransigence.

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