Foreign Minister Hossein Amir-Abdollahian denounces the United States for its preventing the UN from fulfilling its duty to press for an end to the Israeli regime's ongoing war of genocide against the Gaza Strip.
The top diplomat made the remarks on Wednesday, addressing a United Nations Security Council (UNSC) meeting on the situation in the Middle East, especially Gaza.
The Israeli regime launched the war on October 7, 2023 following Operation al-Aqsa Storm by Gaza's resistance movements. Close to 25,500 Palestinians, mostly women and children, have lost their lives so far as a result of the onslaught.
The United States has been providing Israel with unbridled military and political support in its onslaught against Gaza, arming Tel Aviv with more than 10,000 tons of military hardware. The US has also torpedoed the prospect of cessation of the Israeli aggression by stonewalling ratification of all Security Council resolutions that have been calling for a permanent ceasefire in the Israeli aggression.
Amir-Abdollahian denounced the US for serving "as the practical supporter and main accomplice of the Israeli regime in its crimes."
Washington, he said, "has prevented this body (the UNSC) from effectively fulfilling its inherent duties in stopping the overt genocide of a nation and establishing a ceasefire in the Gaza Strip."
"...the US must compel the Israeli regime to stop the war and pull itself out of the trap that the Israeli regime has set to drag the US into direct conflict."
'War not the solution'
Amir-Abdollahian stressed that the killing of innocent civilians, especially women and children, had to be stopped immediately.
"War is not the solution. Security cannot be achieved by resorting to the use of force and committing the crime of genocide in Gaza," he asserted.
Amir-Abdollahian called on the UNSC to act on its duty to pass a resolution calling for an immediate and permanent ceasefire in Gaza, and unhindered delivery of humanitarian aid to the territory.
Such a resolution should also urge immediate and complete withdrawal of the Israeli regime from the coastal sliver, and extract a commitment from the regime to refrain from any efforts to relocate Palestinians to Egypt and Jordan.
'Israel can never destroy Hamas'
The foreign minister pointed to one of the goals that the Israeli regime has purportedly been seeking through waging the war, namely "total destruction" of the Palestinian resistance movement of Hamas that rules Gaza.
"That time will never come," Amir-Abdollahian stated.
Expressing the reason for his assertion, the top diplomat said, "In the past 80 years, this nation (the Palestinian nation)’s will of steel has not weakened."