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Araghchi raps world powers over erosion of confidence in UN
Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi criticized some world powers for denting confidence in the United Nations as he arrived in New York to attend the 81st session of the United Nations General Assembly meeting.
Speaking to reporters upon his arrival in New York on Monday night, Araghchi said that the theme chosen for this year’s General Assembly – restoring trust in the United Nations – was itself an admission that confidence in the organization had been undermined and, in practice, vanished, because of its failure to uphold international peace and security.
He placed the blame on powers that grant themselves the right to act as they please, ignore international institutions, international law and even the collective conscience of humanity, and claim immunity for themselves and their clients.
“As a result, we see a criminal entity like the Zionist regime [of Israel] given a completely free hand to do whatever it wishes,” he said. “Yet, regrettably, Western and European countries — who style themselves as champions of human rights and humanitarian law — remain silent in the face of these actions.”
Iran, he said, had seen no serious condemnation from those same governments of the crimes committed in Palestine, Gaza, Lebanon and Iran.
“If someone in a corner of a country like Iran faces a problem, they shed crocodile tears and raise a hue and cry,” Araghchi said. “But in the face of the atrocities that occurred – where 168 innocent children were deliberately massacred in a single instant – these countries do not even issue a simple condemnation.”
He was referring the US’s deadly missile attack on a school in southern town of Minab on the first day of its aggression against Iran on February 28, which claimed the lives of 168 people, most of them children.
No trust, he concluded, could remain in an organization under the influence of such countries. That was why the question of restoring confidence mattered: it gave the world a chance to discuss how trust in the United Nations had been destroyed, and how it might yet be rebuilt.
Araghchi also said the Iranian delegation’s foremost purpose at this year’s UN General Assembly is to take the world stage and defend the righteousness, rights and interests of the Iranian nation after the cowardly war of aggression by the US and Israel.
“Our most important objective is to appear on a major international platform to defend the righteousness, the rights and the interests of the Iranian people,” he said.