THE HAGUE (REUTERS, AFP) - Judges at the highest UN court for disputes between states on Wednesday (Feb 3) ruled that they can hear a case filed by Iran against the US, seeking to have sanctions against Teheran lifted.

A majority of a panel of 16 judges found that the International Court of Justice (ICJ), also known as the World Court, has jurisdiction in the dispute.

Iran brought the case in 2018 after then US President Donald Trump's administration imposed sanctions, following Trump's decision to abandon a 2015 pact under which Iran accepted curbs to its nuclear programme.

New US President Joe Biden has said he wants to return to that pact, although Teheran and Washington still disagree on steps to be taken for that to happen.

The United States had tried to argue that Iran could not base claims at the World Court on a 1955 bilateral friendship pact.

However, judges found the treaty, signed decades before Iran's 1979 Islamic revolution and the sharp deterioration in ties with Washington, could be used as a basis for the court's jurisdiction.

"The court unanimously rejects the preliminary objections to its jurisdiction raised by the Unites States of America according to which the subject matter of the dispute does not relate to the interpretation or application of the Treaty of Amity," presiding judge Abdulqawi Yusuf said.

Other US objections to the case were also dismissed, meaning Iran's claim will now move on to a hearing on the merits.

A final decision would likely take several more years.

The ICJ's rulings are binding, but it has no power to enforce them, and the US and Iran are both among a handful of countries to have ignored its decisions.

Still, Iran's top diplomat hailed the ruling on Wednesday as a "victory".

"Another legal victory for Iran," Mohammad Javad Zarif tweeted, adding that the ICJ "dismissed all US preliminary objections in the case brought by Iran over unlawful US sanctions".