Geneva (AFP) – Iran vowed at the United Nations on Monday that it would not submit to “lawless aggression”, saying its citizens were in “grave danger” from US and Israeli strikes. At the UN Human Rights Council in Geneva, where countries were discussing the rights situation in Iran – notably following its deadly crackdown on protesters in recent months – Tehran said the focus instead should be on the Middle East war.
“The most urgent and fundamental human rights issue concerning Iran is the imminent threat to the lives of 90 million people whose lives are in immediate and grave danger under the shadow of reckless military aggression,” said Ali Bahreini, Iran’s ambassador to the UN in Geneva.
“An aggression that is carried out by some of the most lawless and unscrupulous actors on the international stage.”
Bahreini said that if such “reckless militarism” was met with indifference, “Iran will most certainly not be the last country to suffer such treatment.”
[…]
During a session on Iran’s record, Bahreini urged the UN’s top rights body to instead discuss the Iranian cultural heritage under “indiscriminate” attack and “the innocent children massacred at their school desks”.
Iran has accused the United States and Israel of conducting a deadly missile attack on a school in the southern city of Minab. Washington has said it is investigating the incident. AFP does not have access to the site.
The ambassador said more than 1,300 people had been killed in Iran and more than 7,000 injured since the US-Israeli strikes began.
“Under such circumstances, what exactly is Iran expected to do?” he asked, insisting: “Iran is not a nation that submits to coercion, intimidation or lawless aggression.”
The six Gulf Cooperation Council countries, plus Jordan, condemned Iran’s attacks on their territories, saying they endangered regional security and civilian lives, and “cannot be justified under any pretext”.
The Human Rights Council was holding an interactive dialogue between nations and the council’s special rapporteur on rights in Iran and its fact-finding mission on the country.
The reason Iran wants people to talk about the war and not the protests, is that they themselves are much better at killing their own citizens, with 10-30k dead and 300k injured during the January protests.
Do you have any evidence for those numbers? As much as I dislike the Iranian regime, it’s hard to believe they’re capable of harming 300k citizens in a month. None of this justifies the amerisraeli agression anyway, bombs won’t help free the Iranian people…
Here you go: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2025–2026_Iranian_protests
Thank you! I concede on the numbers, it’s clear the numbers are around the orders of magnitude you provided.
I still stand on the point that the outside agression is unjustified, especially given the goals of both the USA and Israel are not the freedom of the Iranian people. All it’s doing is increasing the number of dead and injured, as well as further radicalising the country. The IRGC will fill a similar role as Hamas does in Gaza; being the only ones fighting back against outside agression will force the people to align with them if they wish to maintain the Iranian sovereignty.
Iranians in general will not align with the IRGC, they are universally hated. Their recent actions have just made them even more hated.
It is true that US and Israel don’t have the best of the Iranian people in mind. However, many Iranians hope that this may create a chance for the Islamic regime to be replaced.
Time will tell, I suppose. There isn’t a great record of positive regime change following US aggression in the middle east though, quite the contrary.
Indeed, the track record is abysmal. And that is worrying.
The Iranians around me say this is their last hope. They have tried reforming the system from inside, they have tried protesting. And the regime has just become more ruthless and violent. Many have actually been calling for foreign interventions - they don’t actually care who.
Compared to what Israel did to Palestinians, those horrible figures are rookie numbers.
Same thing if compared with the numbers of deaths in Iraq as direct and indirect result of the American Invasion (estimates I’ve seen were of over 100k killed directly and over 1.2 million indirectly) as well as in countries in that area were Western nations imposed “regime change” like Libya were people are still dying due to the chaos and infighting between the warlords that took over when Kadhafi was killed.
Even a murderous regime such as the one of the Ayatollahs is nothing next to what countries like America and Israel do when they succeeded in Regime Change in the Middle East, and especially when they get control of a country there.
Certainly given the raging racism of its population and what it has done to merelly the 2 million people in Gaza, the Israelis gaining control of a muslim country of 90 million people would likely result in a Genocide of such incredible proportions that it would push the Holocaust itself into a minor footnote in the history of mass murder.
The US and Israel would be way worse for Iranians than even that murderous theocratic regime.
This is why this specific war is way more important than even that murderous crackdown.
I think it’s also worth pointing out all the involvement the USA (and others, such as the UK) have had in radicalising Iran. All the meddling with their internal politics, plus international sanctions, only serve as fodder for the anti-western sentiment. This sentiment often comes with anti-lgbt sentiment too, as the western world is seen as a promoter of lgbt acceptance.
My point is leaving Iran alone is the best option for the Iranian people to achieve their own freedom, and all the outside meddling only hinders that progress.
Exactly.
The “foreign bogeyman” is the single most common way for those holding to power they do not deserve, to keep holding it.
In fact this is so common that it doesn’t just apply to authoritarian regimes like that in Iran, but also both of “couldn’t care less about common people” parties in the US (“immigrants” being the Republican bogeyman and “Russia” being the Democrats’) and even to Bibi’s desperatelly holding to power in Israel in order to avoid jail time for Corruption.
So nations willingly playing that bogeyman role towards Iran actually strengthen the regime.
And this is just the side of “utility for sociopaths in power”. There are also the genuine believers who think they’re doing what they have to do for their country and whose belief that “we have to remain in power no matter what or this country will be destroyed” is also reinforced by foreign countries acting against their country, the worse those actions the stronger that believe and the more extreme actions they will accept to “protect my country”.
Given the long history of foreign intervention in Iran and how this regime rose to power as on the back of a popular uprising following the spark of democracy in Iran being crushed and the dictatorship of the Shah restored by foreign powers, I suspect both of these dynamics are strongly at play there.
For sure, this illegal agression by the USA and Israel will only serve to destroy any leverage the protestors might have built over the regime. And that’s exactly what Israel wants, they have no interest in a stable, democratic Iran.
I’m not from the USA, I don’t exactly know if the Democrats use Russia as a foreign boogeyman. That said, Russia (unlike immigrants) has recently given the western world, or at least Europe, reasons to see it as a boogeyman. The invasion of Ukraine and all the hybrid warfare it wages against the EU are good examples.
While I fully agree with you that the foreign policy of western nations, mostly led by the US, has had terrible consequences for the global south, I don’t think Russia’s actions have had a positive impact either. It takes two to tango, and Russia has been the other side of many proxy wars around the globe.
The only silver lining I see in all this is the potential for a new world order, led by middle powers, focused on human rights and international law. I’m not too optimistic about this, though…
Well, I’m not from America either.
My conclusion about how “Russian interference” is just the Democrat’s version of “imigrants are taking your jobs” comes from what I’ve read from American sources and observing a very similar phenomenon in Britain, were the politicial system is quite similar in being a de facto power duopoly thanks to a First Past The Post voting system.
My experience of also living in smaller countries is that they’re way less nationalist, hence local problems are more likely to be seen as having local causes and “blame foreigners” excuses have less traction (though, as we see now in Europe, blaming immigrants does have some traction).
Mind you, I’m not saying that Russia isn’t interfering or that they’re good guys in any way, I’m saying that their influence in a country like the US is a tiny fraction of the influence of the local elites of that country, not least because for almost a century Russia was seen as an enemy of America so there are a lot of antibodies against it there.
As for all this shit in Iran, I think what we’re living is a period of the end of an Empire (the US) and the rise of another (China), all of which is part of a natural cycle (even if it tends to take 100+ years) that happens again and again in History.
In that sense what’s going in Iran is nothing more than a consequence of the latter part of the fall of a empire when some kind of populist strongman promising a return to the time of greatness gets power in the decadent, weakened, Empire center and then proceeds to do all manner of actions that further weaken it. Historically getting into stupid wars to distract the masses from internal problems or in the hope of using captured resources to prop-up the Empire, all under the mistaken belief that the Empire is still powerful, is pretty common of such End Days Of Empire leaders.
IMHO, this war is not really about Iran - Iran and Iranians are just the unfortunate victims of the death throes of Imperium America