Families of terror victims descend on Washington demanding that America enforce its own courts and stop handing leverage back to Iran.
LUTHMANN NOTE: The families of murdered Americans should never be forced to crawl through congressional hallways begging the government to enforce judgments already entered by its own courts. Iran and its proxies financed bombings, hijackings, battlefield attacks and civilian slaughter. The victims proved their cases. The judgments are real. Yet Washington keeps discovering new urgency when diplomats want Iranian assets unfrozen and endless patience when widows and wounded veterans want justice. That inversion is not only morally diseased; it is sick to its core. Pay the victims before rewarding Tehran. Preserve every available asset. Fund every lawful judgment. The scumbags of humanity have received enough accommodation. It is time their victims receive justice, or else it is time to burn Tehran to the ground. If they won’t pay in dollars, they should pay with their civilization before they destroy ours. This piece is “Tehran’s Unpaid Blood Debt.”
By Richard Luthmann
A Quarter-Century Waiting Room
(WASHINGTON, D.C.) — There is something obscenely rotten in a system that can identify the architects of mass murder, prove their responsibility in American courts, enter final judgments for the dead and wounded—and then tell their families to keep waiting.
Waiting is what Janlyn Scauso has done for nearly twenty-five years. Her husband, FDNY firefighter Dennis Scauso of Hazardous Materials Company No. 1, ran toward the World Trade Center when civilized people were running away. He was killed when the South Tower collapsed on September 11, 2001.
Janlyn was left to carry the grief, raise the memory, and repeatedly explain to Washington why a court judgment should mean something when the defendant is a terrorism-sponsoring government.
On Monday, victims and families from attacks spanning four decades gathered at Upper Senate Park before heading into congressional meetings. Their message was brutally simple: “Don’t Leave Us Behind.” They represented the 1983 Beirut embassy and Marine barracks bombings, TWA Flight 847, Khobar Towers, the East Africa embassy bombings, 9/11, Iranian-backed attacks in Iraq, the 2016 Bastille Day massacre and Hamas’ October 7 atrocities.
They are not professional mourners. They are survivors, widows, veterans, children and Gold Star families forced into becoming lobbyists because the machinery of government moves faster to negotiate with Tehran than to honor Americans already holding lawful judgments.
The obscenity is not merely delay. It is inversion. The victims must beg. The bureaucrats deliberate. The diplomats bargain. The killers’ sponsors count their assets. The scumbags of humanity get strategy sessions; American families get another anniversary.
Tehran’s Unpaid Blood Debt: Janlyn Carries Dennis Forward
Scauso’s presence gives the Washington effort its moral center. She is not presenting an abstract policy paper. She is carrying Dennis into every meeting, every hallway and every conversation where officials might otherwise reduce terrorism judgments to a line item.
Since 9/11, Janlyn Scauso has spoken publicly about loss, resilience and remembrance, preserving the story of a firefighter who answered the call and never came home. Joined in advocacy by her daughters, Gabrielle and Juliette Scauso, their testimony also exposes what government language conceals: “unpaid judgment” means a family lived through murder, survived years of litigation, proved its case and still has not received the justice the court ordered.
Around her stood others with their own permanent dates. Angela Mistrulli lost her father, Joseph, on the 107th floor of the North Tower when she was seventeen.
Jane Sharp Synnestvedt survived seventeen days as a hostage after Hezbollah-linked terrorists hijacked TWA Flight 847.
Preston Kaplan endured an Iranian-made explosively formed projectile in Baghdad, more than sixty surgeries and a below-the-knee amputation, while his wife, Nicole, became caregiver and advocate.
David King escaped the burning Pentagon with catastrophic burns.
Thomas Lawrence survived Khobar Towers.
Anne Dammarell was shattered by the 1983 U.S. Embassy bombing in Beirut. Itamar Shapira survived the October 7 “death shelter.”
Mindy Kleinberg lost her husband and helped force creation of the 9/11 Commission.
Different attacks. Different decades. The same criminal pipeline: governments and proxies using money, explosives, hijackers and fanatic foot soldiers to slaughter innocents, then hiding behind borders, diplomacy and time. These witnesses make bureaucratic evasion impossible.
Tehran’s Unpaid Blood Debt: Gillen and Malliotakis Step Up
The immediate legislative fight is over the U.S. Victims of State-Sponsored Terrorism Fund, created to compensate people holding final American judgments arising from international terrorism committed by designated state sponsors.
The Fund’s governing law has been amended repeatedly since 2015, including through the USVSST Fund Clarification Act, the Sudan Claims Resolution Act and the Fairness for 9/11 Families Act. Yet the basic scandal remains: many families with judgments are still waiting for full payment, even after the Justice Department announced a record distribution exceeding $2.8 billion in January.
That is why Representatives Laura Gillen, a New York Democrat, and Nicole Malliotakis, a New York Republican, deserve a clear nod for doing what Washington rarely does well: crossing the aisle on behalf of people who have already paid the highest price.
Their stand-alone version of Amendment 1120 would strengthen the Fund, protect victims holding unpaid terrorism judgments and preserve repayment through future terrorism-related recoveries. The families came to Capitol Hill to demand that Congress enact the protection rather than bury it under parliamentary maneuvering, partisan warfare or some eleventh-hour deal made for convenience.
This should not be difficult. When an American court enters judgment against a state sponsor of terrorism, the United States must treat that judgment as more than ceremonial parchment. A nation that cannot enforce its own judgments against the financiers of murdered Americans teaches every hostile government the same lesson: wait long enough, hire enough intermediaries, survive enough news cycles, and Washington may eventually value diplomatic flexibility more than the blood on the floor.
Tehran’s Unpaid Blood Debt: No Payday for Terrorists
The families’ open letter to President Donald Trump puts the question where it belongs: no Iranian assets should be released, transferred, unfrozen, or returned—and no sanctions should be lifted or relieved—before outstanding terrorism judgments owed to American victims are resolved.
The group says more than $156 billion in damages awarded by United States courts remains unpaid. It warns that any financial relief to Tehran frees other money for Hamas, Hezbollah, Palestinian Islamic Jihad and Iran’s wider proxy system of exported murder.
That demand is neither radical nor partisan. Congress previously addressed terrorism claims before normalization involving Libya and Sudan. The principle is elemental: do not reward the sponsor before paying the victims. Do not return leverage to the government found liable while widows, wounded veterans and orphaned children are still holding judgments. Do not ask Janlyn Scauso to accept another speech while the people who financed terror receive assets, concessions or renewed international legitimacy.
Justice delayed is not always justice denied. Sometimes it is justice degraded—whittled down by bureaucracy until accountability becomes a commemorative phrase spoken once a year. That is what these families are fighting. They are not asking Washington to resurrect the dead or erase the scars. They are asking their country to stand behind its courts, protect the Fund and place American victims ahead of Iran’s treasury and its terrorist proxies.
Dennis Scauso answered America’s call in minutes. His family has waited decades for America to answer theirs. Congress and the administration should stop making the victims chase justice through the halls of power.
Pay the judgments. Preserve the assets. Punish the sponsors. And never leave these families behind.
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