Addressing the UN Security Council on Tuesday, Iravani said, “The US has further exacerbated the conflict by overtly aligning itself with the aggressor at the expense of the innocent Palestinian population.”
“Its (the US’s) rapid provision of military and logistical support to the oppressive occupying regime, thus made the US complicit in the brutal massacre of innocent Palestinian people in the Gaza Strip,” he added.
Amid the atrocities, the diplomat went on, the US has been standing up to the international community’s overwhelming desire to take the occupying regime to task over its atrocities.
“The primary impediment to such action has been the unwavering support of the United States, which has exercised its veto power on more than 40 resolutions within the Council,” he noted.
“Iran continues to fully support the legitimate rights of the Palestinian people. Our commitment is to stand with Palestinian aspirations until the occupation is ended,” the envoy concluded.
Hours after the Hamas military operation against Israel on October 7, US officials promised ‘rock-solid and unwavering’ support to its closest ally in the Middle East. Washington, which provides about $3bn in annual military aid to Israel, has ordered the movement of military ships and aircraft closer to Israel as a show of support. Israel is the largest cumulative recipient of United States foreign assistance since World War II.
President Joe Biden has pledged unwavering support for Israel as its military pummels Gaza with bombardment. He stated that Washington will provide Tel Aviv with everything it needed.
US Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin has also said Washington would provide munitions to Israel. The Pentagon chief has also announced the deployment of the second aircraft carrier “to deter hostile actions against Israel or any efforts toward widening this war following Hamas’s attack”. In the eastern Mediterranean the carrier USS Eisenhower and its accompanying ships will join the USS Gerald R. Ford.
And, US Secretary of State Antony Blinken added that Washington will never falter from its support for Israel.
On Sunday, Foreign Minister Hossein Amir Abdollahian stated that the United States is waging a war on Palestinians in the Gaza Strip through Israel, and further cautioned that the current status in West Asia resembled a powder keg which could spiral out of control.
Referring to Biden’s visit to Tel Aviv, the top diplomat said that it is a “bitter and unfortunate reality” that the American leader was quick to pay an extraordinary wartime visit the occupied territories and voiced support for the Zionist regime’s assault against hospitals, mosques, churches and residential areas.
It’s a great shame that the American president announced that the US would dispatch hundreds of planes, ships and trucks filled with military equipment to the occupied territories to support the mass murder that Israel is committing in Gaza but has managed to coordinate plans for only 20 trucks carrying humanitarian aid to enter the besieged enclave, he added.
“So, the Israeli regime has waged a proxy war against Palestinians,” the minister concluded.
On October 7, Hamas initiated a multi-pronged surprise military operation via land, sea and air. The group announced it was in response to the storming of Al-Aqsa Mosque in occupied East Jerusalem and Israeli settlers’ growing violence against Palestinians. The attacks have so far killed more than 1,400 and injured over 5,000, according to Israeli officials. Hamas also announced it is holding between at least 200 and 250 hostages.
Following the multi-front attack by Hamas, Israel carried out heavy bombardment across the Gaza Strip, killing almost 6,800 Palestinians, including more than 2,000 children and over 1,100 women, and wounding over 16,000 others. Tel Aviv has also ordered a “complete siege” of Gaza, saying he would halt its supply of electricity, food, water and fuel.
Israel’s relentless bombing of Gaza has damaged half of the besieged enclave’s residential units and displaced 70 percent of the population, Palestinian officials have announced.
The Gaza Health Ministry has also confirmed that the healthcare system in the besieged territory has “totally collapsed due to the Israeli war”. Health Ministry Spokesperson Ashraf Al-Qudra stated 65 medics have been killed and 25 ambulances have been destroyed in Israeli raids.
“Twelve hospitals and 32 healthcare centers were forced out of service. We are afraid that many more will stop operations in the coming hours due to lack of fuel,” he added.
According to the local government’s media office, around 165,000 residential units were damaged, with at least 20,000 of them completely destroyed or made unfit for habitation.
The media office in the Palestinian coastal sliver, has announced Israel had dropped more than 12,000 tons of explosives on the Gaza Strip since the beginning of the war.
“The explosive force of these explosives is equivalent to the nuclear bomb dropped on Hiroshima in Japan” in 1945, the office said in a statement, adding, “An average of 33 tons of explosives were dropped per square kilometer on the Palestinian enclave since Israel started its aggression.”
Israel’s military has also ordered 1.1 million people living in Northern Gaza to evacuate their homes, amid signs it is set to ramp up its offensive. The bombing, as well as enforced displacement orders by the army, has pushed 1.5 million people out of their homes.
The UN has warned it is “impossible for such a movement to take place without devastating humanitarian consequences” as hospitals in the besieged territory are “on the brink of collapse”.
Gaza is one of the most densely populated places on Earth, where some 2 million people live in an area of 140 square miles. It has been almost completely cut off from the rest of the world for nearly 17 years. More than half of its population lives in poverty and is food insecure, with nearly 80% of its population relying on humanitarian assistance.
Human rights groups have stressed that depriving an occupied population of basic necessities is a war crime. Palestinian health officials have warned Gaza is rapidly running out of water and electricity, and the population faces severe shortages of food and medicine. They say several hospitals in the besieged territory are under constant bombardment and facing imminent shutdown due to a lack of fuel.
Five UN agencies have also warned that the humanitarian situation in the Gaza Strip is “catastrophic”, calling for more international help as conditions deteriorate in the densely populated besieged enclave.
“Gaza was a desperate humanitarian situation before the most recent hostilities,” the UN agencies said in a joint statement on Saturday, adding, “It is now catastrophic. The world must do more.”
“More than 1.6 million people in Gaza are in critical need of humanitarian aid,” added the statement, which was signed by the World Health Organization (WHO), the UN children’s agency (UNICEF), the World Food Program (WFP), the UN development agency (UNDP), and the world body’s population fund, UNFPA.
Tehran says the history of the apartheid regime is full of assassinations, massacre, torture and killing of Palestinian kids, and described Tel Aviv regime’s atrocities and massacre of Palestinian women and children as indicative of the destitute of Zionists. Iranian officials say the Tel Aviv regime has been struggling for more than 70 years to exit its identity crisis which has been mixed with genocide, plunder, forced displacement and scores of other inhumane moves.