Story highlights
The Department of Justice's request aims to push Thursday's original court-ordered deadline to January
Boeing has argued that making the details of the sale available in court would harm its posture in the marketplace
The Trump administration asked a Chicago federal court Thursday for a two-month deadline extension on its decision assessing whether revealing secret details of a $17 billion commercial aircraft deal between Iran and Boeing would interfere with US foreign policy by obstructing a key component of the Iranian nuclear deal.
Filed just one day before President Donald Trump is expected to announce plans to decertify the Iran nuclear deal, the Department of Justice request aims to push Thursday’s original court-ordered deadline to January.
While court documents cite a need for more time to review the potential national security implications behind Boeing’s request to keep the terms of its deal with Iran confidential, the Justice Department’s request to delay a decision involving the aerospace giant ahead of Friday’s major policy announcement on Iran is raising questions.
The push to reveal secret details behind the controversial commercial aircraft deal is led by the Leibovitch family who, as victims of Iranian state sponsored terrorism, obtained a $67 million award against Iran in US federal court.
Unable to collect that money, the family filed for Boeing to disclose the terms of its aircraft deal with the Islamic Republic to determine whether Iran maintains reachable assets in the US – a sale that was permitted only after Iran and the Obama administration’s 2015 nuclear agreement.
Boeing has argued that making the details of the sale available in court and to the public would harm their posture in the marketplace and potentially undermine the international nuclear agreement with Iran.
The court has ordered the US government to state its position on the sale and its relevance – or lack thereof – to national security but Thursday’s request to move the deadline is not consistent with the Trump administration’s broader views regarding Iran and the nuclear deal, according to Nitsana Darshan-Leitner, an attorney for the Leibovitch family.
“While we do not believe Boeing, a private non governmental company, had any right to assert a national security privilege in the first place it now seems pretty clear that the Trump Administration’s position is that the Iran Deal is a dangerous threat to the United States and should be decertified,” Darshan-Leitner told CNN.
“As such, we are hopeful that the court will allow the American terror victims in this case, who are owed millions of dollars in unsatisfied court judgments from the Islamic Republic, to receive the information Boeing has been desperately attempting to conceal - the details of its airplane deal with the terrorist regime in Tehran,” she said.
Trump appears poised to “decertify” the Iran nuclear deal on Friday and is expected to lay out an aggressive new whole-of-government strategy to counter Iran’s regional aggression and its threats worldwide.
But given the expectations around the Iran nuclear plan, the court ordered deadline “put the Trump administration in a corner,” a former senior Israeli official who dealt with financial warfare against Iran told CNN ahead of the DOJ’s request for an extension.
“The decision is now a political one,” the official said, adding how the administration handled its role in the proceedings would be sign of whether Trump is just talking about going after Iran or if he means business.