Guterres’s coddling of Iran shows the UN's credibility is dying - opinion

In a scandalous, shameful, and disgraceful statement published on June 29 by the Iranian UN Mission’s official X (formerly Twitter) account, Iran’s UN ambassador Amir Saeid Iravani blatantly, and even proudly boasted of his country’s promise to “obliterate Israel if Israel attacks Hezbollah in Lebanon.” 

One may assume that nobody was really very surprised by such a statement emanating from a senior Iranian official. 

This, especially in light of the multitude of similar threats to annihilate Israel emanating on a daily basis from the Iranian political and military leadership, as well as the abhorrent, weekly antisemitic sermons by senior Iranian ayatollahs and other clerics throughout Iran echoing the antisemitic sentiments of Iranian Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei.

However, what is surprising and even shocking is the fact that the ambassador’s threatening statement was issued on the Iranian official UN Mission’s Twitter account, and by no less than their permanent UN representative. 

Yet, nowhere can we find any criticism by UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres, the ostensible guardian of the UN’s Charter, calling the Iranian ambassador to task for such a violent statement which violates the basic tenets and principles behind the very existence of the United Nations.

In fact, at the same time as the Iranian UN ambassador publicly released the threat to obliterate Israel, Guterres was busy praising and congratulating UN member states on successfully concluding a vague conference, welcoming the setting up of an “open-ended technical expert group to address developments in small arms and light weapons manufacturing, technology, and design.”

Given Guterres’s widely known and recently increasing antagonism toward Israel, verging on open hostility, it is perhaps not surprising that he and his advisers chose to overlook and deliberately ignore the Iranian statement.

But the Charter of the United Nations, the very basis for the functioning of the organization, refers specifically in its preambular paragraphs to the determination of all members of the organization “to practice tolerance and live together in peace with one another as good neighbors,” and “to ensure, by the acceptance of principles and the institution of methods, that armed force shall not be used, save in the common interest.”

Similarly, the opening article of the charter refers to the obligation of all states “to maintain international peace and security, and to that end: to take effective collective measures for the prevention and removal of threats to the peace, and for the suppression of acts of aggression or other breaches of the peace,” and to be “a center for harmonizing the actions of nations in the attainment of these common ends.”

Above all, Iran is committed, together with all other member states of the United Nations, to “refrain in their international relations from the threat or use of force against the territorial integrity or political independence of any state, or in any other manner inconsistent with the purposes of the United Nations.”

Guterres' selective ignorance

But Guterres evidently chooses shamefully to ignore Iran’s blatant violations of the UN Charter.

While Guterres and his staff appear to regularly demonstrate alarming alacrity, enthusiasm, and efficiency in rushing to condemn Israel, even by relying on false, inaccurate, and questionable data provided by UN bodies openly hostile to Israel, as well as upon slanted media reporting, they evidently prefer to turn a blind eye to Iran’s behavior in openly abusing the UN Charter.

While Guterres’s coddling of the Iranians, together with a similar coddling of Iran by some major UN powers, may be dismissed by many as petty UN politicking, it nevertheless represents an additional component in the sad deterioration of the United Nations, and the dramatic reduction in any credibility and effectiveness that it might have had in the past. 

This in itself raises the question whether, after its 80 years of functioning, it is not high time that serious world powers rethink the entire concept of a world organization, in light of the fact that the UN has been utterly hijacked and taken hostage by those bent on destroying the international community rather than enhancing its effectiveness.

Is that what the founding fathers of the United Nations intended?

The writer formerly served as a senior lawyer in the Office of the Legal Adviser of the United Nations. He has since served as the legal adviser to Israel’s Foreign Ministry and as Israel’s ambassador to Canada. He presently heads the international law program at the Jerusalem Center for Foreign Affairs.