Israel and Iran traded barbs at the United Nations General Assembly meetings this week, with each accusing the other of responsibility for the deadly violence in Lebanon and Gaza.
While each side pressed its case in strong language, Iran’s framing distorts what precipitated the Israel-Hamas war and whitewashes Tehran’s decadeslong effort to destroy the state of Israel via proxy forces.
In his speech to the assembly Friday, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu addressed what he called “the lies and slanders leveled at my country by many of the speakers at this podium.”
Netanyahu said Iran, not Israel, was responsible for the ongoing war in Gaza. He vowed to “continue degrading Hezbollah until all our objectives are met,” and warned Tehran there is no place in the Middle East “that the long arm of Israel cannot reach.”
Iran’s state officials and allies of the country voiced narratives at the United Nations painting Tehran as a constructive force “in the evolving global order” and Israel as an aggressor and an outcast.
Iranian President Masoud Pezeshkian used the General Assembly platform to accuse Israel of portraying what he called “genocide” against Palestinians in the Gaza Strip as “legitimate self-defense.”
By contrast, he claimed Iranian foreign policy was intended to “safeguard its own security” and “not to create insecurity for others.”
Addressing an emergency meeting of the U.N. Security Council on September 26, Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi said Israel “does not deserve membership in the U.N.”
He claimed Israel had driven the Middle East to “the brink of a broader conflict” due to its “aggression and heinous crimes against nations of the region.”
“Now more than ever, Israel has become a serious threat to international peace and security,” Araghchi said.
Reporting on Araghchi’s comments, Iran’s state-run Press TV framed Israel’s incursion into the Gaza Strip as a “brutal military onslaught against the coastal sliver.”
While Iran accuses Israel of being the aggressor force, the war in the Gaza Strip started when militants from Hamas, Islamic Jihad and other groups attacked towns and settlements in southern Israel, killing 1,200 people, mostly civilians, and taking some 250 hostages.
Iran has provided Hamas and Islamic Jihad with weapons, funding and training.
A day after the October 7 attack, Hezbollah began launching missiles into Israel, often into residential neighborhoods. Those actions have displaced tens of thousands of Israelis.
Hezbollah, an Iran-backed Shiite Muslim political party and militant group, has been instrumental in the decadeslong Iran-Israel proxy conflict and the Israel-Lebanon conflict, including the 2006 Lebanon War, during which it launched indiscriminate attacks against Israeli civilians.
The Wall Street Journal, citing senior members of Hamas and Hezbollah, reported on October 8, 2023, that Iran helped plot the Hamas attack, and gave a “green light for the assault.“
Iran denies it played any role in the October 7 events.
On September 26, CNN’s Christiane Amanpour asked Javad Zarif, Iran’s vice president for strategic affairs, if he supported Hamas’ October 7 attack on civilians. Zarif replied that “nobody supports actions against civilians” but added that “history did not start on October 7.”
He continued, “… it’s not for us to decide whether the price that the Palestinians are paying is worth the fight.”
Iran’s support for anti-Israel forces extends beyond Israel’s immediate neighbors.
The Houthis, a Shiite Islamist political and military organization in Yemen, has also targeted Israel. Houthi attacks have paralyzed vital world commercial traffic in the Red Sea since the Israel-Hamas war began.
On September 26, Reuters, citing U.N. sanctions monitors, reported that Iran’s Revolutionary Guard Corps had helped the Houthi rebels grow “from a localized armed group with limited capabilities to a powerful military organization.”
The Revolutionary Guard’s external operations arm, the IRGC-Quds Force, has been instrumental in supporting this so-called “axis of resistance,” which by some estimates entails over 100 Shiite militias sowing instability throughout the Middle East.
The multipronged attack Israel is facing reflects what Israeli leaders and analysts have described as Iran’s “ring of fire” — an Iranian-backed network of militias based in states surrounding Israel.
This ring of fire allows Iran to strike Israel via proxies, while maintaining plausible deniability. The level of influence Tehran maintains over these groups it spent billions of dollars creating is unclear, and analysts argue the militant groups risk dragging Iran into a war with Israel.
Israel has faced legitimate criticism for the rising casualties of its military operations in Gaza, with the death toll reaching 41,534 people as of September 26.
These death statistics come from the Hamas-run health ministry and have not been independently verified. The ministry does not distinguish between combatant and civilian deaths.
Likewise, Lebanese officials say 700 people have been killed amid Israel’s intensifying bombing campaign since September 23.
International Criminal Court, or ICC, Prosecutor Karim Khan is seeking arrest warrants for Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Defense Minister Yoav Gallant, as well as several Hamas leaders, for crimes against humanity.
Israel has questioned the ICC’s jurisdiction in the proceedings, claiming they have not been given the opportunity to investigate the allegations. Israel is not a state party to the ICC, which is a court of last resort, meaning it can only exercise its jurisdiction when the accused country will not or cannot investigate the alleged crimes.
On September 20, Israeli Foreign Ministry spokesperson Oren Marmorstein said Israel remains committed to the rule of law but would also “continue to defend its citizens” against attacks from Hamas and “Iran’s other terrorist arms.”
