State Secrets Sink Iran Case

After private conversations with U.S. government officials, in which a New York judge was told a defamation case might unearth state secrets, a Greek shipping magnate’s lawsuit was dismissed. Victor Restis had filed a lawsuit against United Against Nuclear Iran, a group made up of former diplomats and whose board includes former directors of intelligence services of the UK, Germany and Israel. One of the group’s strategies, writes Noah Feldman in Bloomberg View, is to “name and shame” those who trade with Iran. Restis sued the group for making what he said were false accusations that his companies were “frontmen for the illicit activities of the Iranian regime.” Feldman portrays what happened next as a case of a judicial system that’s run off the rails. The dismissal of the suit was just the last step in bizarre sequence of moves that would “be comical if it weren’t so serious,” he writes.