The United States announced on Wednesday that it was terminating a decades-old treaty affirming friendly relations between it and Iran.
Secretary of State Mike Pompeo said withdrawing from the 1955 Treaty of Amity was long overdue and followed Iran "groundlessly" bringing a complaint with the International Court of Justice challenging US sanctions on the basis that they were a violation of the pact.
He denounced the Iranian case before the UN court as "meritless" and said the Treaty of Amity was meaningless and absurd.
"The Iranians have been ignoring it for an awfully long time, we ought to have pulled out of it decades ago," he told reporters at the State Department.
The little-known treaty with Iran was among numerous such ones signed in the wake of World War II as the Truman and Eisenhower administrations tried to assemble a coalition of nations to counter the Soviet Union.
Like many of the treaties, this one was aimed at encouraging closer economic relations and regulating diplomatic and consular ties.
Meanwhile, National Security Adviser John Bolton said the administration also was pulling out of an amendment to the Vienna Convention on Diplomatic Relations that Iran or others, notably the Palestinians, could use to sue the US at The Hague-based tribunal.
Bolton told reporters at the White House that the provision violates US sovereignty.
"The United States will not sit idly by as baseless politicized claims are brought against us," Bolton said.
He cited a case brought to the court by Palestine challenging the move of the US Embassy in Israel from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem as the main reason for withdrawing.
