Iran on Saturday said that it doesn't owe victims of the 1983 bombing of the U.S. Marine barracks in Beirut anything – and it won't pay the $2.65 billion a U.S. court has ordered Tehran to pay. "The American judge's ruling is baseless. Americans have taken repeated measures contrary to legal principles. ... This ruling against Iran is politically motivated and the result of pressures," the official IRNA news agency quoted government spokesman Gholam Hossein Elham as saying.

A U.S. District Court judge on Friday ruled that Iran was behind the bombing, and that it had to make restitution to the families of the 241 victims of the act of terrorism – the largest-ever such judgment by an American court against another country. According to the judgment, the families are entitled to seize Iranian assets anywhere they can get their hands on them.