Iran’s U.N. envoy warned the country had the “right to take all necessary measures to respond to this egregious violation.”
Iran’s ambassador to the United Nations has issued an appeal to the international community and a direct warning to Israel after a new round of deadly escalations threatened to spark a new all-out war in Lebanon, according to the text of an address obtained by Newsweek.
In the speech delivered Friday before the U.N. Security Council, Iranian Permanent Representative to the U.N. Amir Saeid Iravani accused Israel of “committing systematic and provocative acts of terror” in the form of the “unprecedented” series of blasts that affected pagers, portable radios and solar equipment primarily used by the Lebanese Hezbollah movement across parts of Lebanon and Syria on Tuesday and Wednesday.
The apparent sabotage attacks, for which Israel has neither confirmed nor denied responsibility, killed 37 people and wounded thousands more, according to Lebanese health officials. Most of the dead and wounded are reported to be members of Hezbollah, though they also included civilians, among them medical workers and children.
Also seriously injured was Iranian Ambassador to Lebanon Mojtaba Amani, who has undergone surgery for his wounds. The attack is the latest to involve Tehran’s foreign service after the killing of Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corp (IRGC) personnel at an Iranian consular building in Syria in an April airstrike prompted the first-ever direct exchange of attacks between the two archfoes.
“Now again, this regime has crossed a red line by targeting our ambassador”, Iravani said Friday.
Iravani further affirmed that Iran “will rigorously pursue accountability for the attack on our ambassador in Lebanon”, asserting that, “We reserve our right under international law to take all necessary measures to respond to this egregious violation.”
The wave of device detonations came amid worsening cross-border clashes between Israel and Hezbollah, a close ally of Iran that has launched daily operations against Israel since the Palestinian Hamas movement launched a surprise attack on Israel last October. The ensuing war in the Gaza Strip has emerged as the deadliest in the decades-long Israeli-Palestinian conflict while fighting between Israel and Hezbollah has reached the most active level since their last war in 2006.
