The UN Security Council held an urgent meeting at the request of Russia, as the war in Gaza continued to fan tensions across the Middle East, with potentially dramatic consequences for regional peace and security.
The UN Political Affairs chief appealed for the Council to help prevent further escalation and ease tensions across the region.
Briefing ambassadors, the UN’s Under-Secretary-General for Political and Peacebuilding Affairs Rosemary DiCarlo warned that escalating attacks were fueling chances of miscalculation.
“We have witnessed near daily incidents in the region. These include some 165 attacks on United States facilities in Syria and Iraq, prompting US strikes in the two countries,” DiCarlo said.
The UN official described the febrile situation elsewhere in the region, including between Israeli Defense Forces and Hezbollah across the Blue Line, which separates the armed forces of Israel and Lebanon.
Repeated rocket fire also took place over the occupied Golan between Israel and militias reportedly linked to Iran, as well as airstrikes attributed to Israel by Damascus on multiple locations in Syria, she added.
She also noted the Houthi drone and missile attacks against ships in the Red Sea, and the retaliatory strikes by the US and UK.
“I reiterate the Secretary-General’s call on all parties to step back from the brink and to consider the unbearable human and economic cost of a potential regional conflict,” DiCarlo said.
She appealed to the Security Council to continue to actively engage all concerned parties to prevent further escalation and the worsening of tensions that undermine regional peace and security.
Iran’s Ambassador Amir Saeid Iravani strongly condemned the US strikes against Iraqi and Syrian territories.
The Deputy Permanent Representative of Iraq Abbas Kadhom Obaid Al-Fatlawi said American attacks are not in line with Iraq’s relationship with the US, adding that Iraq condemns and categorically rejects any attack on its territory based on futile and illogical pretexts.
Syria’s UN Ambassador Koussay Aldahhak said the arguments heard at the meeting were the “same flimsy pretexts and misleading claims the US administration is promoting to justify its repeated attacks”.
Robert Wood, Ambassador and Deputy Permanent Representative of the US to the UN, said his country’s “necessary and proportional” actions on February 2 in Iraq and Syria against Iran’s Islamic Republic Guards Corps and affiliated militia groups was taken in exercise of the US’s inherent right to self-defense.
China’s Ambassador Zhang Jun said that action taken by the US was creating new turmoil in the Middle East.
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