Iran's UN envoy decries Security Council's failure to intervene in US-Israeli war

Amir Saeid Iravani calls UNSC complicit through silence, lists US threats and war crimes committed

Iran's UN envoy on Wednesday sharply denounced the UN Security Council's failure to address the US-Israeli war against his country, according to Iranian media.

"Regrettably, the Security Council has failed to discharge its responsibilities in the face of this grave violation due to the obstruction of a permanent member that is itself an aggressor," Amir Saeid Iravani said in remarks delivered before the council.

"The United States and the Israeli regime, and those who assisted and facilitated this aggression, must bear full legal and international responsibility for this heinous crime and serious violations. Impunity for such crimes not only betrays the victims, but also threatens international peace and security," he added.

Iravani further told the body tasked with ensuring international peace and security that it "must not remain silent or indifferent to the repeated and daily baseless threats made by the President of the United States against Iran," saying US President Donald Trump's rhetoric "sets a dangerous precedent."

The threats listed by the envoy included “explicit threat to bomb Iran ‘back to the Stone Age,’” destroy the country’s energy, economic and industrial infrastructure, target Iranian nuclear scientists and senior officials, and “even rhetoric implying the destruction of Iran’s civilisation,” according to IRNA news. “The normalisation of such threats of force, acts of aggression, and inflammatory rhetoric by a permanent member of the Security Council sets a dangerous precedent,” he said.

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Iravani warned that civilians were bearing an ever-greater burden of deliberate attacks, collective punishment and the methodical destruction of civilian infrastructure. A "tragic reality," he said, that is "evident from Gaza to Lebanon, and most recently in the aggression against Iran."

The envoy said the US-Israeli war had once again laid bare the "harsh reality" of how international humanitarian law was being violated.

"During forty days of this unwarranted and savage war, the aggressors have committed grave and systematic violations of international humanitarian law by deliberately targeting civilians and civilian infrastructure," he said.

He singled out what he called "one particularly horrific attack", the deliberate targeting and complete destruction of a girls' school in Minab, in which more than 168 students were killed. "These are not collateral damages; they are war crimes," he asserted.

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Regional tensions have escalated since the US and Israel launched strikes against Iran on February 28. Tehran retaliated with strikes targeting Israel as well as US allies in the Gulf, along with the closure of the Strait of Hormuz.

A ceasefire took effect on April 8 through Pakistani mediation, but talks in Islamabad failed to produce a lasting agreement. Trump later extended the truce indefinitely while maintaining a blockade on vessels travelling to or from Iranian ports through the Strait of Hormuz.

Trump on Wednesday said negotiations are in their "final stages" but insisted he is "in no hurry" to complete them.

"I just wonder whether or not they have the good of the people, because some of the things they're doing, to me, mean they don't have the good of the people, and they have to have the good of the people. There's a lot of anger now in Iran, because people are living so badly," he said.