THE UNITED Nations (UN) Security Council is to convene today at the request of Iran to discuss Saturday’s Israeli strikes on the country.
Iran says Israel violated international law and undermined its sovereignty and territorial integrity in the first direct missile attacks on Iran that the Zionist regime has ever publicly admitted.
Israel’s ambassador to the UN Danny Danon said that the move to convene the Security Council is ‘another attempt by Iran to harm us, this time in the political arena’ and rejected Iran’s claim about violation of international law by Israel.
Iran’s Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi said he wrote to UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres to condemn the Israeli attacks against Iran and also called for an immediate session of the UN Security Council.
‘Although there is no hope that with the presence of the US and some other countries, any product will come out of the Security Council that would work towards reducing tensions and preventing crimes by the Zionist regime, we are pursuing this,’ he told state television.
Tehran’s top diplomat said the meeting would provide a good opportunity for Iran and others in the region who condemned the attack to emphasise their positions.
‘The US is standing behind Israel with all its capabilities and is a partner in the crimes of the Zionist regime,’ Araghchi said, adding that ‘the participation of the Americans is clear for us’ in the Israeli attacks early Saturday.
‘At the very least, they provided the air force of the Zionist regime with an air corridor.’
Iran’s Parliament Speaker said Israel’s attacks on his country were a failure when compared with Iran’s October 1st missile attacks and promised that Tehran will retaliate.
‘The Zionist regime has no achievement but genocide and the mass murder of defenceless children and women in Gaza and Lebanon, and today, it has no credibility on the international stage,’ Mohammad Bagher Ghalibaf said in a televised opening address to a closed-doors meeting to evaluate the Israeli attack.
‘The Islamic Republic of Iran, in the framework of its inherent right of legitimate self-defence, and Article 51 of the UN Charter, considers itself to have the right to defend itself, and a response to this violation will be certain and in adherence to considerations,’ he said.
Ghalibaf called the US ‘the main partner in all the war crimes’ of Israel, and said Washington must ‘rein in’ Israel and push it towards reaching a sustainable ceasefire in Gaza and Lebanon to stop the killing of civilians.
The parliament speaker thanked regional neighbours for condemning the Israeli attacks on Iran.
- The Houthis in Yemen have held exercises to simulate defence against waves of attacks coming from land, sea and air.
The group’s armed forces released images from tactical military manoeuvres on Yemen’s western coasts, saying their moves continue to be ‘in support of the Palestinian and Lebanese peoples’.
Houthi soldiers trained for responding to ‘large-scale offensive operations launched by hostile forces through four virtual enemy offensive waves on Yemeni territory, with the full participation of enemy ships and naval warships’ in different environments, the group said, adding that they also drilled defending a village against an aerial attack.
• See editorial
