Validity and Effectiveness of Iran’s Reservations to the Palermo Convention and the Terrorist Financing Convention

Abstract

Iran’s ratification of the Palermo Convention and accession to the International Convention for the Suppression of the Financing of Terrorism in 2025 transformed a previously theoretical controversy into a concrete legal issue concerning the validity and legal effects of the reservations deposited by Iran. The central question is whether a reservation deemed valid or effective under the law of treaties is necessarily compatible with the principles of Islamic jurisprudence and the Constitution of the Islamic Republic of Iran, while also satisfying the technical and effectiveness standards of the Financial Action Task Force (FATF). Employing a theoretical, documentary, and descriptive-analytical methodology, the present study examines the instruments of deposit, official objections registered through August 2026, the Vienna Convention on the Law of Treaties, principles of Imami Shiʿa jurisprudence, and the Financial Action Task Force statement of June 19, 2026. The principal contribution of the article is the development of a three-dimensional analytical framework comprising treaty-law validity, domestic-jurisprudential legitimacy, and technical adequacy and effectiveness. The findings demonstrate that, despite their interrelationship, these three dimensions do not necessarily coincide. Express exclusions from dispute-settlement mechanisms are generally valid; by contrast, broad references to domestic law or Sharia, standardless case-by-case cooperation, and indeterminate political exceptions raise concerns regarding compatibility with the object and purpose of the treaty and the principle of good faith. Moreover, even a reservation that is valid under treaty law may prove inadequate in a technical assessment. Accordingly, conditional cooperation is defensible only where the relevant limitations are provision-specific, clear, necessary, proportionate, and subject to institutional oversight.