Iran uses UN meetings to attack Israel and whitewash destabilizing actions

Israel and Iran exchanged words at sessions of the United Nations General Assembly this week, accusing each other of being responsible for deadly violence in Lebanon and the Gaza Strip.

While each side laid out its arguments in stark terms, Iran's narrative distorts what sparked the war between Israel and Hamas and glosses over Tehran's decades-long efforts to destroy the state of Israel using proxy forces.

In his speech to the gathering on Friday, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu addressed “the lies and slanders spread against my country by many of the speakers on this podium.”

Netanyahu said Iran, not Israel, was responsible for the ongoing war in Gaza. He vowed to “continue to degrade Hezbollah until all of our objectives are achieved,” and warned Tehran that there is no place in the Middle East “that the long arm of Israel cannot reach.”

Iran's officials and the country's allies expressed narratives at the United Nations portraying Tehran as a constructive force “in the evolving global order” and Israel as an aggressor and outsider.

Iranian President Masoud Pezeshkian used the General Assembly platform to accuse Israel of portraying what he called a “genocide” against Palestinians in the Gaza Strip as “legitimate self-defense.”

In contrast, he claimed that Iran's foreign policy was aimed at “ensuring its own security” and “not creating insecurity for others.”

At an emergency meeting of the UN Security Council on September 26, Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi said that Israel “does not deserve membership in the United Nations.”

He claimed that Israel had brought the Middle East to “the brink of major conflict” due to its “aggression and heinous crimes against nations in the region.”

“Now more than ever, Israel has become a serious threat to international peace and security,” Araghchi said.

Iran's state-run Press Television reported Araghchi's comments and portrayed Israel's invasion of Gaza as a “brutal military attack against the coastal strip.”

While Iran accuses Israel of being the aggressor force, the war in Gaza began when militants from Hamas, Islamic Jihad and other groups attacked cities and settlements in southern Israel, killing 1,200 people, mostly civilians, and taking about 250 hostages.

Iran has provided Hamas and Islamic Jihad with weapons, funding and training.

A day after the Oct. 7 attack, Hezbollah began firing rockets into Israel, often into residential neighborhoods. These actions have displaced tens of thousands of Israelis.

Hezbollah, an Iranian-backed Shiite Muslim political party and militant group, has been instrumental in the decades-long proxy conflict between Iran and Israel as well as the Israel-Lebanon conflict, including the 2006 Lebanon War, in which it carried out indiscriminate attacks on Israeli civilians.

The Wall Street JournalCiting senior members of Hamas and Hezbollah, he reported on October 8, 2023 that Iran helped plan the Hamas attack and gave the “green light to the attack.”

Iran denies having played a role in the October 7 events.

On September 26, CNN's Christiane Amanpour asked Javad Zarif, Iran's vice president for strategic affairs, whether he supported Hamas' attack on civilians on October 7. Zarif responded that “no one supports actions against civilians,” but added that “history did not begin on October 7.”

He continued: “…it is not for us to decide whether the price the Palestinians pay is worth the fight.”

Iran's support for anti-Israel forces extends beyond Israel's immediate neighbors.

The Houthis, a Shiite Islamist political and military organization in Yemen, have also targeted Israel. Houthi attacks have paralyzed vital global trade in the Red Sea since the start of the Israel-Hamas war.

On September 26, Reuters, citing UN sanctions monitors, reported that Iran's Revolutionary Guard Corps helped the Houthi rebels grow “from a localized armed group with limited capabilities into a powerful military organization.”

The Revolutionary Guard's external operations arm, the IRGC-Quds Force, has been instrumental in supporting this so-called “Axis of Resistance,” which is estimated to include over 100 Shiite militias causing instability across the Middle East.

The multi-pronged attack Israel is facing reflects what Israeli leaders and analysts have described as Iran's “Ring of Fire” – an Iranian-backed network of militias based in states surrounding Israel.

This ring of fire allows Iran to attack Israel through proxies while maintaining plausible deniability. The extent of influence Tehran has over these groups, which it has spent billions of dollars to create, is unclear, and analysts argue that the militant groups risk drawing Iran into a war with Israel.

Israel has faced justifiable criticism over the rising death toll of its military operations in Gaza. The death toll as of September 26th was 41,534 people.

These death statistics come from the Hamas-run Ministry of Health and have not been independently verified. The ministry does not distinguish between combatant and civilian deaths.

Likewise, Lebanese officials say 700 people have been killed in Israel's increasing bombings since September 23.

At the International Criminal Court (ICC), prosecutor Karim Khan is applying for arrest warrants against Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Defense Minister Yoav Gallant as well as several Hamas leaders for crimes against humanity.

Israel has questioned the ICC's jurisdiction in the proceedings, claiming they were not given an opportunity to investigate the allegations. Israel is not a state party to the International Criminal Court, which is a court of last resort, meaning it can only exercise its jurisdiction if the accused country is unwilling or unable to investigate the alleged crimes.

On September 20, Israeli Foreign Ministry spokesman Oren Marmorstein said that Israel remained committed to the rule of law but would also “continue to defend its citizens” against attacks by Hamas and “other terrorist weapons of Iran.”