National Regime for Enforcement of Foreign Arbitral Awards in Iran

Enforcement of foreign arbitral awards is one of the most important debates in international arbitration, as the ultimate goal of the arbitration is issuance of an effective and enforceable arbitral award. Review of different legal systems demonstrate that foreign arbitral awards will be enforced based on an applicable international convention, if any, otherwise, i. e. when no convention is applicable or the applicable convention is silent to some aspects of enforcement proceeding, foreign arbitral awards will be enforced based on national regime for this purpose. The same is true if the applicable convention includes the most favorable right provision and entitles the beneficiary of the award to select between national regime for enforcement of foreign arbitral awards and enforcement regime provided in the relevant convention and the beneficiary chooses the former one. In this essay the author has tried to explain the national regime for enforcement of foreign arbitral awards in Iran and raised another ground for enforcement of foreign arbitral awards based on assimilation of the said awards to national/domestic awards vis-à-vis the grounds like assimilation of foreign arbitral awards to foreign judgments or treating foreign awards as foreign deeds or contractual obligations.