Attribution of Private-Person's Wrongful Acts to a State: Standard of Control in Jurisprudence of Iran-U.S Claims Tribunal

Attribution of private-person’s act to a state is accepted in international law in some exceptional matters. Acting under the direction or control of the state is one of those exceptional cases; by proving state control over private persons and entities, their actions are attributable to the state. However for understanding the required level of the control and direction, we shall review and inquiry the judicial jurisprudence in order to make these theoretical concepts more tangible. Iran-U.S claims tribunal, as the most prominent international arbitration, has separated jurisdiction and the merit phase in some of its cases.From jurisdictional point of view, the tribunal has applied a looser standard while in the merit, tribunal’s approach has more affinity for theory of effective control. In such cases, as a general rule,stateshave notbeenliable for the conduct of non-state actors unless the tribunal could find the conduct in question intensely controlled by the state. Indeed the tribunal, in place of determining standard of control in these kinds of cases, has not lowered the threshold for imputing private acts to statesbut treated with it in an exceptional manner. The purpose of present article is to examine standard of direction and control, while the focus is on the jurisprudence of Iran- U.S claims tribunal.