OPINION:
It was the Islamic Republic of Iran’s turn to speak at the United Nations General Assembly (UNGA) on Wednesday morning and President Masoud Pezeshkian took to the podium, defiant in both manner and word.
He launched his speech by criticizing the United States for attacking Iran and focusing on what he repeatedly claimed were violations of international law. He neglected to acknowledge Iran’s attacks on hotels, unarmed cargo ships and water desalination plants, all undisputed violations of international law.
Mr. Pezeshkian pointed out that the U.S. likes to refer to Iran as terrorists, yet American missiles that killed 168 children at the beginning of the war. “They call us terrorists,” he fumed to a sparse audience in the U.N. chamber, “We are not. America is the terrorist.” He passionately continued, “In 200 years, Iran has never attacked anyone.”
Forget 200 years, in the last 200 hours Iran has, through its proxy group there, attacked the legitimate government of Yemen along with neighbor Saudi Arabia. Iran provides arms, funds and military direction to the Houthis. In this most recent action Iran threatened to instruct their self-proclaimed “ally” to seize control of portions of the Red Sea coast and the Bab el-Mandeb Strait. Almost immediately that threat became reality as the Houthis sent missiles and drones to attack critical oil infrastructure in Saudi Arabia.
The Houthis’ offensive also drove more than 30,000 Yemeni citizens out of their homes, no small irony considering that Iran’s president also invoked the unfortunate plight of Gaza civilians being forced from their homes.
Mr. Pezeshkian emphasized how, for the last seven months, citizens of Iran have been gathering in the streets nightly supporting the regime. He failed to mention that thousands of Iranian citizens who gathered publicly in January to oppose Iran’s regime were slaughtered by their own government. There is no diversity of thought in Iran. Actually there is, but if one dares share a thought that diverges from the official state line, death is a very real possibility.
The Iranian president also declared that “we will not give up the right to our own rule. We will have no nuclear weapon, but we will have no nuclear restrictions.”
He lamented that the Middle East is in turmoil because of the United States and Israel.
“War in one country spills into neighboring countries,” he declared, pointing the finger at America. The word “spill” indicates accidental activity. But the war didn’t accidentally “spill” into Iran’s Arab neighbors — it was repeatedly poured onto them with malice by Iran itself.
On day one of the war Iran targeted a five-star hotel in the United Arab Emirates. Iran has sent missiles and drones to hit water desalination and power infrastructure in Kuwait and Bahrain. It fired on cargo vessels and facilities in Oman and in the Strait of Hormuz. The list goes on. None of it was “spilled”; all of it was poured — deliberately and with bad intentions.
No one likes to play the victim any more than Iran does. Mr. Pezeshkian reminded the world the Strait of Hormuz runs along Iran’s coast, bellyaching that “the United States closed access to us, to our own waterways.” He neglected to mention that the American blockade came only after Iran had closed the strait to the rest of the world. But with water welling up in his eyes, he lambasted the unfairness of the U.S. blockade.
But he quickly transitioned back into defiance, declaring the Iranian “people will not succumb to bullying.” Lost on him was how the Iranian people already succumbed to the bullying of their own government back in January of this year. In order to assure it stay in power, the Iranian regime literally counts on the fact that their own people will give in to bullying.
Perhaps the most outrageous assertion by Iran’s president was his brash declaration that “Iran has never been an aggressor.” The Islamic Republic’s entire history is littered with aggression, beginning with the 1979 assault and hostage-taking at the U.S. Embassy all the way through the current missile and drone attacks on virtually every neighboring country, including those countries attempting to mediate an end to the war.
Mr. Pezeshkian dedicated part of his speech to the inhumanity of the tens of thousands of Gaza Palestinians killed by Israel. There was no mention of the tens of thousands of Iranian citizens that his own government killed in a matter of days in early January. More than once, Mr. Pezeshkian used the term “bully” to describe the United States but not once did he acknowledge the bullying tactics of the Iranian regime against its own people.
He approached the end of his comments with words that could easily have been uttered from the same podium by a left-leaning European leader.
“When we have a world that only works for a few of privilege,” we are in a problematic world. That’s rich coming from the leader of a nation whose 90 million people will suffer as a few cling to power at their expense.
Mr. Pezeshkian closed his speech talking about a future with security, fairness, dignity and justice, about a world where no voice is lost in the chaos of power. One can only hope, for the good of the people of Iran, that he and the rest of the existing Islamist regime hear those words, look in the mirror and have a miraculous and complete conversion, making those very words come true.
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