At Security Council Parley on Middle East, US and Israeli UN Envoys Decry Iranian Regional Provocations

Ben Cohen

US Ambassador Nikki Haley addresses the UN Security Council. Photo: US UN Mission.

The US and Israeli envoys to the UN slammed Iran’s rulers at a Wednesday meeting of the Security Council on the situation in the Middle East, arguing that fears over the survival of 2015 nuclear deal with Tehran were leading the international community to ignore the Islamic Republic’s regional provocations.

US Ambassador Nikki Haley cautioned the Security Council that it had “adopted a dangerously short-sighted approach.”

“Judging Iran by the narrow confines of the nuclear deal misses the true nature of the threat,” Haley declared. “Iran must be judged in totality of its aggressive, destabilizing, and unlawful behavior. To do otherwise would be foolish.”

Israeli Ambassador Danny Danon asserted in his remarks that uncompromising hostility toward the Jewish state was a constant of the Tehran regime’s policy. “Iran seeks to destroy Israel by any means necessary,” Danon said. “It has tried to obtain nuclear capabilities for years. Today, the regime’s intentions are no different than before.”

Haley added that “nearly every threat to peace and security in the Middle East is connected to Iran’s outlaw behavior. For the international community’s engagement with Iran, this is a time of clarity and opportunity.”

“The United States has now embarked on a course that attempts to address all aspects of Iran’s destructive conduct, not just one aspect,” Haley said. “It’s critical that the international community do the same.”

Haley also urged the Security Council to renew its investigation into “the horrific use of chemical weapons in Syria.”

Danon presented what he called an “indictment” of Iran to the Security Council, citing its historical involvement in such terrorist outrages as the bombing of the US Marines barracks in Beirut in 1983, the bombing of the AMIA Jewish center in Buenos Aires in 1994 and the attack on Israeli tourists in the Bulgarian resort city of Burgas in 2015.

“In Syria, Iran has armed Bashar al-Assad, the butcher of Damascus,” Danon stated. “Without Iranian support, the Assad regime would have failed in its evil mission to murder its own people. The Iranian ayatollahs sponsor Hezbollah’s war chest, Hamas’ budget of bloodshed and Islamic Jihad’s terror funds.”

“Iran also commits horrific human rights violations against its own people,” Danon continued. “If you are gay, lesbian or bisexual you will be hanged from a crane. In Iran if you are a girl as young as nine years old you can be married off to a grown man. In Iran, if you’re a journalist and you criticize the regime, you will be arrested with no right to a trial.”

In Tehran on Wednesday, Iran’s “supreme leader,” Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, threatened to “rip into shreds” the 2015 nuclear agreement if EU governments failed to persuade US President Donald Trump’s administration to drop its objections to the deal. Trump has argued that the deal is antithetical to the US national interest, and that its provisions for monitoring Iran’s nuclear activities were too flimsy to confirm beyond doubt that weapons development was not being carried out.

“The US is the agent of international Zionism,” Khamenei claimed, decrying Trump’s recent verbal attacks on Iran as the “blatherings and nonsensical remarks by the foulmouthed US president.”