On April 28, 2015, the journalist Kai Bird, writing in "The New York Times," discussed Dammarell v. the Islamic Republic of Iran (2003), in conjunction with a second case, Peterson v. the Islamic Republic of Iran (2007). The latter case was filed by one thousand plaintiffs, relatives of the 241 people killed in the bombing of the U.S. Marine barracks on October 23, 1983. Bird argued that the failure of the Iranian government to pay settlements in both cases would pose for the administration of U.S. president Barack Obama "a major stumbling block to any diplomatic resolution of Washington’s troubled relations with Iran" at a time when the member states of the U.N. Security Council were negotiating over Iran's nuclear program (see Iran Nuclear Deal Framework).