Iranian President Masoud Pezeshkian told global leaders that Israel’s ramped-up attacks on Hezbollah in Lebanon “cannot go unanswered” during his first address to the United Nations General Assembly on Tuesday afternoon.
The Iranian president, in comments made both to the Assembly and during his time in New York City, urged the world to stop Israel’s wars in Gaza and Lebanon and that Hezbollah “cannot stand alone” in fighting back.
“We condemn Israeli crimes against humanity. It is imperative that the international community should immediately stop the violence, bring about a permanent ceasefire in Gaza, and bring an end to the desperate barbarism of Israel in Lebanon before it involves the region and the world,” Pezeshkian told world leaders.
Israel’s military has significantly increased its airstrikes in Lebanon, targeting senior Hezbollah leaders and its arsenal. A majority of its strikes have been targeted toward southern Lebanon, while it has carried out a small number of strikes further north in Beirut, Lebanon’s capital.
The current conflict in the Middle East erupted nearly a year ago with Hamas’s Oct. 7 terrorist attack in Israel, in which Hamas terrorists killed more than 1,200 people and kidnapped another 250 others. A day later, Hezbollah began firing projectiles into northern Israel in an attempt to divide the Israeli military’s attention into both the northern and southern areas of the country.
Israel has killed several Hamas leaders and thousands of Hamas fighters, destroyed much of the terrorist group’s infrastructure as well as uncovered much of the group’s underground tunnel infrastructure. It has also killed more than 40,000 Palestinians in Gaza, while Israeli leaders have admitted that about half were civilians. Hamas intentionally embeds itself within the civilian population with the intent of incurring civilian casualties. Israel has destroyed much of the infrastructure in Gaza, while an overwhelming majority of Gazan civilians have been displaced from their homes and face both food insecurity and the spread of disease due to the lack of humanitarian resources.
“Israel has been defeated in Gaza,” Pezeshkian stated.
He did not reference Hamas or the Oct. 7 terrorist attack.
In recent weeks, Israel’s military has largely turned its attention to the somewhat contained war with Hezbollah that was simultaneous to its war against Hamas in Gaza. The Israeli military hit hundreds of targets over the last two days in Lebanon, which killed more than 500 people and injured more than 1,800 others. Hezbollah embeds its missiles among civilian homes.
Israel has also targeted and killed several Hezbollah senior leaders over the course of the war, including in the time since it escalated its attacks in Lebanon.
Lt. Gen. Herzi Halevi, Israel Defense Forces chief of staff, said Israel will “accelerate the offensive operations,” adding that “Hezbollah must not be given a break.”
Israeli leaders also urged Lebanese civilians living in the southern part of the country to evacuate north.
“Naturally blind Israeli state terrorism over the past few days in Lebanon, followed by a massive aggression with thousands of victims, cannot go unanswered,” the Iranian president added.
However, he did not mention Hezbollah’s continued rocket, missile, and drone cross-border attacks into Israel.
Israel is believed to be behind an unprecedented attack last week in which thousands of Hezbollah militants’ beepers detonated in controlled explosions. A couple dozen people were killed in the near-simultaneous explosions that occurred over two consecutive days, while thousands of people were injured. An Israeli official said Hezbollah has fired over 8,000 projectiles into Israel since it began on Oct. 8.
“Hezbollah cannot stand alone against a country that is being defended and supported and supplied by Western countries, by European countries, and the United States,” Pezeshkian said in an interview with CNN, translated from Farsi to English.
Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araqchi denied a report from Bloomberg News in which Pezeshkian told reporters, “We’re willing to put all our weapons aside so long as Israel is willing to do the same.”
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“Mr. Pezeshkian has not made such remarks at all,” Araqchi told an Iranian news outlet. “The Islamic Republic of Iran would definitely not be indifferent to the Zionist regime’s recent aggression against Lebanon and will defend and support Lebanon in an all-out manner.”
Iran funds and supports several militant groups throughout the Middle East that have all carried out sustained attacks against Israel, U.S. forces in the region, or Western interests over the last year. Hamas and Hezbollah are among its “axis of resistance.”
