UN chief Antonio Guterres lambasted Wednesday before the Security Council “the sickening cycle” of violence in a Middle East on the edge of the “precipice”, while Israel and Iran threatened each other with retaliatory strikes .
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Before the 15 member states of the Council, meeting urgently at the request of France – in the presence of Israel, Lebanon, Iran, Iraq and Syria – Mr. Guterres also took care to “ “strongly condemn Iran’s massive missile attack on Israel” on Tuesday.
Previously accused of not having denounced Tehran by name, the secretary general had been declared “persona non grata» by Israel.
“It is high time to put an end to the sickening cycle of escalation after escalation that is leading the people of the Middle East directly to the brink of the precipice,” warned the UN Secretary General who has never stopped last week, during the General Assembly, to sound the alarm about the risk of total war in the Near East and the Middle East.
“Each escalation serves as a pretext for the next” and “we must never lose sight of the enormous toll of the conflict on civilians,” he lamented, while the dead and wounded have numbered in the tens of thousands since one year.
“The deadly cycle of violence “an eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth” must end,” insisted Mr. Guterres, in unison with the majority of the Security Council, the flagship body of the UN but since divided a decade between the five great powers: the United States, France and the United Kingdom on one side and, on the other side, Russia and China.
“Painful response”
Before this meeting, Israeli Ambassador Danny Danon threatened the press with a “painful response […] in full accordance with international law” after the attack on Iran, the sworn enemy.
“We are under attack. It’s not just an escalation. It is a direct attack on our very existence,” the diplomat denounced during the session, stressing that his country and all believing Jews in the world were preparing to celebrate Rosh Hashana, the New Year.
“The world watches in silence as Iran has financed and ordered attacks against us for a year, and has been arming and training proxies for decades,” he said.
At the other end of the table in the Council room, without a glance, his Iranian counterpart Amir Iravani retorted that “Israel does not understand[ait] that the language of force” and that “diplomacy has[vait] failed”.
“Iran’s response was necessary to restore the balance of forces and deterrence,” argued the representative of the Islamic Republic, threatening: “Israel must understand that every act of aggression will not go unpunished.”
Israel’s only unwavering ally, Washington, through President Joe Biden, has said it is opposed to Israeli strikes against Iran’s civilian nuclear facilities. The international community accuses Tehran of continuing to develop its capabilities with a view to acquiring atomic weapons.
Tense face-to-face
In addition to the invectives between the Israeli and Iranian ambassadors, the atmosphere was also very tense between MM. Guterres and Danon.
It must be said that the Israeli Minister of Foreign Affairs, Israel Katz, had just declared Mr. Guterres “persona non grata» in his country, accusing him of not having “unequivocally condemned the heinous attack on Iran” and accusing him of being an “anti-Israeli secretary general who supports terrorists, rapists and murderers”.
In fact, after the approximately 200 Iranian missiles fired at Israel on Tuesday evening, Mr. Guterres condemned “the widening of the conflict in the Middle East” and called for “a ceasefire”, but without naming Tehran.
The notoriously difficult relationship between Israel and the United Nations has been at its lowest point since October 7, 2023, the date of the unprecedented attack by Palestinian Hamas on Israel, which sparked the war in the Gaza Strip.
In Lebanon, the pro-Iranian Shiite Islamist movement Hezbollah opened a front in support of Hamas on October 8, 2023 by firing rockets at northern Israel.
Israel has since responded and announced on Monday that it had begun a ground offensive in South Lebanon against Hezbollah, whose leaders it decimated, starting with its leader Hassan Nasrallah.
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