Iran Presiding Over UN’s Disarmament Conference Triggers Outrage (Worthy News In-Depth)
By Stefan J. Bos, Chief International Correspondent Worthy News
WASHINGTON/TEHRAN (Worthy News) – Iran, accused of developing nuclear weapons, has come under international criticism after taking over the presidency of the United Nations Conference on Disarmament.
The strict Islamic republic, which has previously faced U.N. restrictions on its missile program, will be president of the conference till March 29 and May 13 to 24, organizers confirmed.
As the presidency rotates alphabetically among member states set to chair the conference this year, other nations include India, Indonesia, Iraq, Ireland, and Israel.
However, U.S. House of Representatives member Mike Gallagher noted that the system means that an “adversary nation actively pursuing the development and proliferation of nuclear weapons is now chairing the single multilateral disarmament negotiating forum.”
Gallagher, a Republican, added in a statement obtained by Worthy News that “Western appeasement of Iran, especially in assuming this role, only serves to degrade the institution and its efforts.”
He noted that “Iran has, for decades, lied to the international community regarding its nuclear development and unabashedly serves as perhaps the largest state sponsor of terrorism in the world.”
Iran, he stressed, “should be prohibited from occupying this post and banned from holding any leadership role in the international community, especially any to do with weapons of mass destruction.”
ARMS RACE
Ironically, under Iran’s presidency, agenda topics include the “cessation of the nuclear arms race and nuclear disarmament” and the prevention of nuclear war.”
Other topics include the “formation of a comprehensive program of disarmament” and “transparency in armaments,” among other issues, Worthy News learned.
Critics say that Iran, where its leadership publicly seeks the destruction of Israel, is now potentially influencing the thinking of delegates on nuclear affairs.
Iranian Foreign Minister Hossein Amir Abdollahian also underscored Tehran’s views on Israel. He condemned in a speech to the conference last month what he called “double standard approaches by international organizations” applied to Israel.
He said Israel was an “imminent threat” to the whole world, and “particularly to people in the Palestinian Authority, Gaza and the West Asia region.”
“The international community should take this threat seriously and make a decisive decision over the unprecedented threat which this occupying, apartheid, and warlike regime is posing to global peace,” Abdollahian urged.
The Iranian diplomat urged the international community to “stop the Israeli genocide and war crimes against the Palestinian people in Gaza” and hold Israel “accountable over its atrocities.”
HAMAS MASSACRE
He did not mention the October 7 attacks by Hamas in Israel when its fighters entered the Jewish nation from Gaza to kill some 1,200 people while kidnapping 253 others. Israel maintains that the “worst atrocity against Jews since the Holocaust,” or Shoah, triggered its war against Hamas in Gaza.
Claire Chandler, the Liberal Party senator of Tasmania, the island state of Australia, said it was “an embarrassment” that Iran could chair the U.N. gathering.
“The Islamic Republic of Iran holding this position while developing a nuclear bomb and being found to have committed serious human rights breaches is an embarrassment for the UN system,” she wrote on the X social media platform.
The director of Geneva-based non-governmental organization UN Watch, Hillel Neuer, urged world leaders not to allow the Islamic “regime” to play a dominant role at the conference.
“We urge all world leaders to STOP legitimizing a radical regime that sponsors terrorism around the globe,” she wrote on wrote on a petition seeking 12,800 signatures.
Neuer wrote that Iran’s leadership “kills its own people for protesting for their human rights and is racing to build a nuclear bomb to threaten the world.” Therefore,
“We call on all Ambassadors to walk out of the UN chamber when the Islamic Republic takes over as president,” she added.
RAISING ALARM
Experts such as the foreign policy vice president of the Washington D.C.-based Heritage Foundation thinktank, Victoria Coates, raised the alarm about the increased production of weapons-grade uranium in Iran.
“This is what they’ve spent the last three years doing while they were being engaged by the Biden administration in [Austria’s capital] Vienna, technically in nuclear talks,” Coates.
She referred to U.S. President Joe Biden’s administration’s efforts to reenter U.N.-backed talks on an Iran nuclear deal, which was abandoned in 2018 by then President Donald J. Trump. “They just kept enriching, kept deploying more centrifuges, and now we’re in this situation where the decision [to stop enriching] is in their hands,” Coates said in a recent interview.
However, Iran says its nuclear program is for “peaceful purposes” despite United Nations experts’ concerns about the program.
President Biden views the restoring a deal with Iran in exchange for the lifting of sanctions choking its economy as the best way forward to prevent development of nuclear weapons in the region.
Yet Abdollahian, the Iranian minister, also called for the “elimination of Israel’s nuclear weapons” a demand unlikely to be met by the Jewish nation surrounded by often hostile Arabic countries.
He also demanded that Israel’s nuclear facilities be placed under the supervision of the UN’s International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA).
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