A senior Iranian envoy has questioned the United States’ ostensible commitment to defending Iranian women, calling on UN member states to skip an informal meeting the US plans to hold at the Security Council on the recent nationwide riots in Iran.
“The US has no true and genuine concern about the human rights situation in Iran or elsewhere,” Iran’s Ambassador and Permanent Representative to the United Nations Amir Saeed Iravani said in a letter to all ambassadors and permanent representatives of the UN member and observer states on Monday.
The US claims that it is defending Iranian women, those who have been seriously hurt by decades of inhumane sanctions imposed by Washington, he said.
He called the recent protests in Iran an internal issue, warning that it would be “counterproductive to the promotion of human rights” if the UN Security Council discussed it.
The United States and Albania plan to hold an informal Security Council meeting on Iran on Wednesday, which can be attended by all UN members. The meeting, according to the US mission to the UN, aims to “highlight the ongoing repression of women and girls and members of religious and ethnic minority groups” in Iran.
“The United States lacks the political, moral, and legal qualifications to hold such a meeting, distorting the very basic principles of human rights,” Iravani said.
The Iranian ambassador called on UN member states to “explicitly object to such reckless and dangerous practices through which the US attempt to create such a dangerous precedent and politicize human rights issues in order to achieve its political agenda.”
Iravani said the US has waged a psychological warfare and a deception operation against Iran while claiming that the informal meeting aims to support rights of Iranian women. But, he continued, this is completely originated from Washington’s hypocrisy and is considered an abuse of the valuable concept of human rights.
He also reiterated the Islamic Republic’s commitment to promotion of human rights and implementation of obligations in this regard within the framework of international law contrary to baseless US accusations against Iran.
The Iranian envoy warned against the unconstructive consequences of any bid by the UN Security Council to deal with the internal issues of countries, saying it would weaken the existing effective mechanisms in violation of the UN principles and objectives enshrined in the United Nations Charter regarding non-interference in the internal affairs of states.
Riots broke out in Iran in mid-September after the controversial death of young Iranian woman Mahsa Amini. The 22-year-old fainted at a police station in the capital, Tehran, and was pronounced dead three days later at a hospital. An official report by Iran’s Legal Medicine Organization concluded that Amini’s death was caused by an illness rather than alleged blows to the head or other vital body organs.
In the meantime, rioters have been going on a rampage across the country. They have been receiving overwhelming backing from Western powers, especially the United States, despite continuing to brutally attack security officers and cause massive damage to public property.
Iran’s Intelligence Ministry and the IRGC Intelligence Organization released a statement on Friday to highlight the major role of foreign intelligence agencies, especially the CIA, in orchestrating the violent riots.
Late last month, the Intelligence Ministry announced that the rioters have been backed by Western regimes and their mercenary media, which disseminated misinformation and distorted the sequence of events that led to Amini’s death even before the official investigation into the incident was announced.