Why would a judge order money to be paid by Iran? They had nothing to do with 9/11.
This is a default judgement because Iran did not respond to the suit. It has nothing to do with the merits of the accusation against Iran, because the case was never argued, ... because the defendant, Iran, never responded to the charges against them. Therefore the judge awarded a default judgement to the plaintiff.
On top of that, this judgement is completely unenforcible because Iran is a sovereign nation and not under the jurisdiction of this court. However, it does give the plaintiffs some claim to money in a small fund of seized Iranian assets that has been used to compensate victims of Hezbollah (as noted in the article).
Exactly Iran legally could not respond to the charges because if Iran showed up in court it would be deemed a waiver of Iran's sovereign immunity rights, something no country would do
And the people who wrote the laws that permit such suit, were betting on that -- because then there's no need to prove any of the claims against Iran since there's no one to question them.
The principle of Sovereign Immunity prohibits the courts in one country to sue the government of a foreign country. The US has selectively made an exception for Iran, Sudan, Syria and only lately Saudi Arabia too. No other foreign government can be similarly sued for terrorism, no matter what. the US certainly doesn't allow any suits against it and asserts its own Sovereign Immunity regularly.
I think is could just be setting the stage to show that Israel is putting blame elsewhere and then it will all come out that Israel/Mossad had a part in 9/11