J.Nouraei & M. Mostafavi Law Offices – 2 February 2026-Tehran –In contractual transactions and obligations, invoking force majeure is usually considered a valid excuse for avoiding performance. However, in a recent car import case, a court rejected the importer’s excuse of force majeure to its customers as inadmissible. The Supreme Court of Iran has ruled in Case number 140113920000800290, published on 11/11/1404 (31 January 2026), that “given the conditions governing Iran’s international relations with foreign countries and in particular the sanctions that have been imposed for many years against the Islamic Republic, it is possible to foresee international sanctions by car traders and importers, and in this respect, the condition of unforeseeability of force majeure is invalid”.
In light of the said ruling, such a decision may be considered by judges as a judicial procedure in similar cases, regardless of the goods or services that are the subject of the contracts between Iranians or foreign nationals with Iranian partners.
Under the Iranian law of obligations, some articles of the Iranian Civil Code mentioned below are related to force majeure:
Article 227 – The party who fails to carry out the undertaking will only be sentenced to pay damages when he is unable to prove that his failure was due to some outside cause for which he could not be held responsible.
Article 229 – If a man who has into an undertaking is prevented from fulfilling it by some elements not within his control, he shall not be convicted to compensate for losses.
(Copyrighted. Re-publication and usage wholly or partially allowed upon naming the source J. Nouraei & M. Mostafavi Law Offices).
