The John Westberg Papers
Jennifer Westberg joins our series "The U.S. and Iran: What Went Wrong?" beginning with its fourth episode, "The Mosaddegh Hour." Jennifer's father, the late John Westberg, was an international lawyer who moved to Iran as a U.S. State Department official in the 1960s. While in Tehran, he resigned from the State Department to work as a private citizen to establish the first Western-style law firm in Iran. He assisted in negotiations for the release of the American hostages during the Hostage Crisis of 1979-1981, and later handled claims under the historic Iran-U.S. Claims Tribunal (IUSCT). He wrote a seminal 1991 book about case law related to the tribunal, International Transactions and Claims Involving Government Parties: Case Law of the Iran-United States Claims Tribunal, as well as a number of law journal articles on the topic.
The College of William and Mary’s Special Collections Research Center holds his papers. Researchers can review the papers in person at the College of William and Mary in Williamsburg, Virginia, and the Special Collections Research Center can digitize specific papers researchers request. The Westberg family hopes to have the entire collection digitized in the near future, making the entire collection accessible online to researchers worldwide.
Learn more about the John Westberg papers at https://scrcguides.libraries.wm.edu/repositories/2/resources/8059.
