The plaintiffs were injured in a 1997 attack by Hamas in Jerusalem and received a federal court ruling that the government of Iran, as a funder of Hamas, was liable for their injuries. In 2003, plaintiffs won a $71 million default judgment against Iran (which refused to participate in the case), and they tried to have seized Persian antiquities on loan to several US museums, including the Oriental Institute of the University of Chicago. As Martha Lufkin reports, the case now turns on the terrorism exception in sovereign-immunity law and on what qualifies as “commercial activity.”