Iran’s mission to the UN has said that the UN Security Council condemnation of Israel’s attack on its consular section in Syrian capital could have prevented the need for retaliation.
“Had the UN Security Council condemned the Zionist regime’s reprehensible act of aggression on our diplomatic premises in Damascus and subsequently brought to justice its perpetrators, the imperative for Iran to punish this rogue regime might have been obviated,” it said on the social media platform X Thursday.
Iran has pledged retaliation for the Israeli airstrike that killed seven Iranian military advisors at its diplomatic annex in Damascus along with six Syrians on April 1.
Leader of the Islamic Revolution Ayatollah Seyyed Ali Khamenei said Wednesday “the evil Zionist regime must be punished and will be punished” for the aggression.
“The consulate and diplomatic missions in any country are considered to be the territory of that country. When they attack our consulate, it means they have attacked our soil,” he said.
Last week, the United States, Britain and France opposed a Russian-drafted UN Security Council statement that would have condemned an attack.
“Russia had drafted a press statement condemning the Israeli attack on the diplomatic premises in Syria but was stopped by the insistence of our Anglo-Saxon colleagues,” Moscow’s UN Ambassador Vasily Nebenzya told reporters.
“This serves as a clear illustration of the double standards employed by the Western ‘troika’ and their actual, rather than declarative, approach to legality and order in the international context,” Russia’s deputy UN Ambassador Dmitry Polyanskiy said in a post on X.
The UN Security Council has issued statements in the past condemning attacks on diplomatic premises.
Press statements by the 15-member council have to be agreed by consensus. Diplomats said the US, backed by France and Britain, claimed that many of the facts of what happened in Damascus remained unclear and there was no consensus among council members during the meeting.
