Israel regime not deserve UN membership: Top diplomat

Abbas Araghchi made the remarks in New York on Thursday, addressing an emergency meeting of the UN Security Council on the situation in the region, which was held with a focus on Lebanon.

The meeting came amid the regime’s ongoing genocidal war on the Gaza Strip and escalated deadly attacks against Lebanon.

The escalation, which began following the launch of the brutal military onslaught against the coastal sliver on October 7, has witnessed the regime carrying out countless attacks against the Lebanese territory, killing hundreds of people over the past week alone.

“In continuation of its brutality in occupied Palestine, the apartheid-occupying regime of Israel is now waging an unjust war of aggression against Lebanon and targeting innocent people across the border and deep inside the territory,” Araghchi said.

He cited the case of the regime’s detonating thousands of booby-trapped pagers and walkie-talkie radios across the country on September 18 and 19, killing at least 39 people and wounding 3,000 others.

The Israeli regime “deliberately” detonated the explosives that had been planted in advance inside the devices, the official said, describing the atrocity as a “new version of terrorism” that “must sound the alarm for the entire international community since this is the most outrageous manifestation of the weaponization of ordinary communication devices.”

He warned that such atrocity could “establish a very dangerous precedent that could be easily replicated by other terrorist groups and entities besides Israel.”

Araghchi denounced the United States, the regime’s biggest supporter, for refusing to allow issuance of “a simple press statement” by the Security Council in condemnation of the “‘mass terror’ operation.”

The official reaffirmed the Islamic Republic’s all-out support for the Lebanese people’s “heroic” defense of the country in the face of the regime, referring to the Lebanese resistance movement Hezbollah’s ongoing anti-Israeli operations.