Statement by H.E. Dr. M. Javad Zarif,

Permanent Representative of the Islamic Republic of Iran

before the Security Council
on

The situation in the Middle East, including the Palestinian Question

New York, July 20, 2006

In the name of God, the Compassionate, the Merciful

Mr. President,

I wish to begin by congratulating you on assuming the Council presidency and the Ambassador of Denmark for her able stewardship of the Council last month. I also thank you for convening this open meeting on an issue, which is truly threatening international peace and security.

The international community is witnessing with horror and indignation the daily exacerbation of two cases of blatant and pre-meditated aggression and multiple war crimes perpetrated by the Israeli regime against the people of Palestine and Lebanon under absurd and all too familiar pretexts, while this Council, entrusted with the responsibility of preserving international peace and security and suppressing acts of aggression, is forced into inaction and appeasement by the patrons of the aggressor.

Nine long days of blanket and indiscriminate air, missiles and artillery strikes against civilians and civilian infrastructures across Lebanon have gone by while this Council was prevented from even calling for a cease-fire. Meanwhile, more than 300 innocent civilians have been murdered, over a thousand maimed and hundreds of thousands turned homeless in a proclaimed response to the capture of two soldiers.

Terrorism in the truest sense of the word is in display, as the aggressor gives short notice before beginning to bomb entire neighborhoods and regions. With bridges, roads, tunnels, sea and air ports already hit, and a complete blockade imposed, terrorized civilians are left to wonder how to flee and where to seek refuge. Still more daunting, with the increasing lack of food and medicine, attacks on humanitarian convoys and disrupted water and electricity supplies, a serious humanitarian crisis is in the making.

No stretching of international law and the Charter principles, even by the most highly paid lawyers, pundits or politicians, can logically sell such unbridled, disproportionate and indiscriminate barbarism and collective punishment against civilians as self-defense.

The aggression on Lebanon followed a similar one on the Gaza Strip. The Palestinian people were and continue to be subject to the same collective punishment by the same perpetrators. In Gaza too, the civilian infrastructures are devastated and civilian population terrorized. The latest US veto in the Council further emboldened the aggressors to continue and widen their crimes with apparent impunity.

Yet, if history is any guide, while the mar machine of the aggressor may be able to lay waste to buildings and infrastructures, kill and maim civilians and take their elected representatives hostage, it is impossible to intimidate the people of Palestine and Lebanon into submission, squash their desire to live free from occupation and terror and crash the hope of refugees to one day return home. In fact, experience indicates that such onslaughts strengthen, not weaken, the resolve of the people to resist aggression, occupation, intimidation and terror.

And while the massive propaganda machine may try to reverse the truth and spread smokescreens to hide the ugly face of aggression, millions of the peoples of the United Nations who have turned out in the streets across the globe know exactly where the blame should lie, which regimes rightly belong in the axis of evil and terror, and who are the culprits and their supporters who have destabilized the region, frustrated the aspirations for peace and justice, punished entire populations for their democratic choice, plunged the Middle East into chaos and are actively provoking a wider conflict.

The brutal collective punishment that the Lebanese and Palestinian people are now enduring is the Israeli signature brand of aggression, which the peoples in the region have experienced time and again in the past several decades. The new round is more alarming as it occurs at a sensitive time when various Lebanese communities and parties are engaged in a national endeavor to reach a comprehensive understanding through an all-inclusive national dialogue – an effort that the aggressors aim to defeat too.

Mr. President,

It is important to note that this Israeli onslaught is part of their designs on Lebanon, exemplified in their repeated violations of Lebanese borders and airspace, holding on to the Shebaa farms and keeping Lebanese detainees, which continued in the years since their retreat from that country. In fact, the blanket air strikes, artillery and missile attacks against targets across Lebanon immediately after the border incident on 12 July are indicative of a pre-existing plan. Wide-range operations, aiming at, among other things, imposing sea, air and land blockade on a whole country in a sensitive region, could not have been carried out without prior planning as well as prior coordination with the supporting power and the receipt of the necessary green light. The joint rejection of all calls for cease-fire is a further proof.

The current position of the US Government is not only the culmination, but pushing to the extremes, decades of unswerving support for Israeli aggressions against the Muslim and Arab people in the region, leading, inter alia, to 31 vetos, and supporting the flouting of those resolutions that, under especial circumstances, escaped the US veto.

More importantly, it is regrettable that the Security Council, long after such grave breaches of international peace and security and the threat of their spillover into adjacent areas, has been rendered incapacitated to address the crisis, utterly failing to live up to its responsibility under the UN Charter – a failure that has been taken as a license by the aggressors to kill and wreak havoc across Gaza and Lebanon.

It would be counterproductive and grossly against the interest of peace and stability in the region if the Council, after over nine days of inaction, is forced to simply relaying the Israeli conditions and helping to impose them on the Lebanese and Palestinian people. An immediate and unconditional cease-fire is what the peoples of the United Nations demand and what the Security Council should try to achieve. While many lives are being shattered, families broken apart, civilian infrastructures devastated and the stability in the wider region threatened, it is cynical to place the plans and interests of the occupying regime ahead and refrain even from calling for a quick cease-fire. We support a comprehensive solution for the crisis, which takes the legitimate demands of the aggrieved people into account, including the release of the Lebanese and Palestinian detainees, bringing the occupation of the Sheba'a Farms to an end, and holding the aggressors accountable for the lives perished and infrastructures devastated.

Mr. President,

Let me just state for the record -- in response to what has become a patented and indeed tired smokescreen for the Israeli representative and his supporters in their attempts to evade responsibility for the crimes that are being perpetrated -- that my Government categorically rejects the baseless allegations against Iran that were repeated today in this Council. These allegations are parts and parcels of an elaborated Zionist scheme to break resistance against aggression and invasion in the region and deflect attention from the root cause of all tensions in the Middle East; that is occupation, and its fallouts, including the illegal detention of thousands of Arabs and the violation of their rights. These allegations emanate from the occupying regime and relayed by Zionist quarters across the globe to overshadow its crimes and excuse its recent chronic setbacks in the face of a growing resistance in Palestine and Lebanon. Iran supports the people and Governments of Palestine and Lebanon and has been prepared to provide them with political and humanitarian assistance in helping them restore their legitimate right to territorial integrity and self-determination.

Thank you Mr. President.