358
Opinion of the Court
van, 501 U. S. 89, 94-95 (1991), and Congress manifestly understood there to be a difference between a suit "based upon" commercial activity and one "based upon" acts performed "in connection with" such activity. The only reasonable reading of the former term calls for something more than a mere connection with, or relation to, commercial activity.4
In this case, the Nelsons have alleged that petitioners recruited Scott Nelson for work at the hospital, signed an employment contract with him, and subsequently employed him. While these activities led to the conduct that eventually injured the Nelsons, they are not the basis for the Nelsons' suit. Even taking each of the Nelsons' allegations about Scott Nelson's recruitment and employment as true, those facts alone entitle the Nelsons to nothing under their theory of the case. The Nelsons have not, after all, alleged breach of contract, see supra, at 354, but personal injuries caused by petitioners' intentional wrongs and by petitioners' negligent failure to warn Scott Nelson that they might commit those wrongs. Those torts, and not the arguably commercial activities that preceded their commission, form the basis for the Nelsons' suit.
Petitioners' tortious conduct itself fails to qualify as "commercial activity" within the meaning of the Act, although the Act is too " 'obtuse' " to be of much help in reaching that conclusion. Callejo, supra, at 1107 (citation omitted). We have seen already that the Act defines "commercial activity" as "either a regular course of commercial conduct or a partic-4 We do not mean to suggest that the first clause of § 1605(a)(2) necessarily requires that each and every element of a claim be commercial activity by a foreign state, and we do not address the case where a claim consists of both commercial and sovereign elements. We do conclude, however, that where a claim rests entirely upon activities sovereign in character, as here, see infra, at 361-363, jurisdiction will not exist under that clause regardless of any connection the sovereign acts may have with commercial activity.
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