Iranian and US officials traded barbs at UN Security Council meeting on deadly protests in Iran and amid threats of attack by Washington.<\/em><\/p>\n<\/div>\n The United Nations Security Council has held an emergency meeting to discuss deadly protests in Iran amid threats by United States\u00a0President Donald Trump to intervene militarily in the country.<\/p>\n Members of the influential 15-member UN body heard from Iran\u2019s deputy UN representative, who warned at the meeting on Thursday that Iranians did not seek a confrontation but would respond to US aggression, and accused Washington of \u201cdirect involvement in steering unrest in Iran\u201d.<\/p>\n list of 4 items<\/span>end of list<\/span><\/section>\n US representative Mike Waltz used his prepared remarks at the meeting to criticise the Iranian government\u2019s response to the protests, noting that the ongoing internet blackout in Iran made it hard to verify the true extent of the crackdown by authorities there.<\/p>\n \u201cThe people of Iran are demanding their freedom like never before in the Islamic Republic\u2019s brutal history,\u201d Waltz said, adding that Iran\u2019s claims that the protests were \u201ca foreign plot to give a precursor to military action\u201d were a sign that its government was \u201cafraid of their own people\u201d.<\/p>\n Waltz did not refer to the threats of military intervention in Iran that Trump has repeatedly made over the past week, before the president appeared to ease his escalating rhetoric over the past day.<\/p>\n Iran\u2019s deputy UN envoy Gholamhossein Darzi told the council that his country \u201cseeks neither escalation nor confrontation\u201d.<\/p>\n \u201cHowever, any act of aggression, direct or indirect, will be met with a decisive, proportionate, and lawful response under Article 51 of the UN Charter,\u201d Darzi said.<\/p>\n \u201cThis is not a threat; it is a statement of legal reality. Responsibility for all consequences will rest solely with those who initiate such unlawful acts,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n UN Assistant Secretary-General Martha Pobee briefed the council, saying that the \u201cpopular protests\u201d in Iran \u201chave rapidly evolved into nationwide upheaval, resulting in significant loss of life\u201d since beginning close to three weeks ago.<\/p>\n \u201cDemonstrations started on 28 December 2025, as a group of shopkeepers in Tehran\u2019s Grand Bazaar gathered to protest the sharp collapse of the currency and soaring inflation, amid a wider economic downturn and worsening living conditions,\u201d Pobee said.<\/p>\n She added that human rights monitors have reported \u201cmass arrests\u201d in Iran, \u201cwith estimates exceeding 18,000 detainees as of mid-January 2026\u201d, but noted that the \u201cUN cannot verify these figures\u201d.<\/p>\n She called on Iran to treat detainees humanely and \u201cto halt any executions linked to protest-related cases\u201d.<\/p>\n \u201cAll deaths should be promptly, independently, and transparently investigated,\u201d Pobee added.<\/p>\n \u201cThose responsible for any violations must be held to account in line with international norms and standards.\u201d<\/p>\n Iranian \u200dForeign \u200dMinister Abbas Araghchi denied on Wednesday that Tehran had plans to execute antigovernment protesters.<\/p>\n In an interview with Fox News, Araghchi said \u201cthere is no plan for hanging at all\u201d when asked whether there were plans to execute protesters.<\/p>\n \u201cHanging is \u200cout of the \u200cquestion,\u201d he \u2060said.<\/p>\n The UNSC also heard from two representatives of Iranian civil society, including Iranian-American journalist and government critic Masih Alinejad, who told the council that \u201creal and concrete action\u201d is \u201cneeded now to bring justice to those who order massacres in Iran\u201d.<\/p>\n Addressing Darzi and the Iranian government, Alinejad said: \u201cYou have tried to kill me three times \u2026 My crime? Simply echoing the voice of innocent people that you kill.\u201d<\/p>\n Thursday\u2019s meeting came as the US imposed further sanctions against the Iranian leadership, including Ali Larijani, the secretary of Iran\u2019s Supreme National Security Council (SNSC), and several other officials, who it said were the \u201carchitects\u201d of Tehran\u2019s \u201cbrutal\u201d response to the demonstrations.<\/p>\n Iran has already been under heavy sanctions for years, further worsening the economic crisis that has, in part, spurred the recent wave of public protests.<\/p>\n Iranian and US officials traded barbs at UN Security Council meeting on deadly protests in Iran and amid threats of attack by Washington. The United Nations Security Council has held an emergency meeting to discuss deadly protests in Iran amid threats by United States\u00a0President Donald Trump to intervene militarily in the country. Members of the […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":8793,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-8792","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-us-canada-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/inernews.online\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8792","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/inernews.online\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/inernews.online\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/inernews.online\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/inernews.online\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=8792"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/inernews.online\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8792\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/inernews.online\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/8793"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/inernews.online\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=8792"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/inernews.online\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=8792"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/inernews.online\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=8792"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}Recommended Stories <\/h2>\n
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