Iran's Pezeshkian slams UN failure to 'extinguish' regional crisis

Kazan, Russia — Iranian President Masoud Pezeshkian on Thursday condemned the 15-nation U.N. Security Council for failing to tackle the Middle East conflict.    "The fire of war is still raging in the Palestinian Gaza Strip and Lebanese cities," Pezeshkian told leaders from emerging economies at the BRICS summit in Russia.    "And international institutions ... topped by the United Nations Security Council — who are drivers of international peace and security — lack the necessary efficiency to extinguish the fire of this crisis."    Pezeshkian condemned Israel for violating "the red lines" of different states and "producing a new wave of violence and terror."  Since the start of the war in Gaza, the Islamic republic has criticized the U.N. body for being inactive and ineffective in ending conflict in the Middle East.   Iran is engaged in an intense diplomatic campaign to establish cease-fires in both Gaza and Lebanon.    The efforts are also aimed at preventing the conflict from expanding across the region after Israel's threat to retaliate to an attack by Iran on October 1.   Tehran said the attack was in response to Israeli strikes in Lebanon, which killed an Iranian general and the head of the Lebanese Hezbollah movement, Hassan Nasrallah, late September.   Iran supports Hezbollah and the Palestinian movement Hamas, whose militant groups are fighting Israel.   'Defeating its purpose'  For his part, Iran's foreign ministry spokesman, Esmaeil Baghaei, turned to social media to criticize the U.N. for turning "into a frustratingly dysfunctional platform."   He said the U.N. was "sadly defeating its purpose" because the United States' "unconditional support for [the] occupying regime" — Israel — "has so emboldened the regime as to expand its aggressions and atrocities across the region," he posted on social media platform X.  The U.S. is one of the five permanent Security Council members with powers to block its decisions.   Earlier in October, Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi accused the United States of obstructing the Security Council over the wars in Gaza and Lebanon.   "[The] inaction of the U.N. Security Council due to the obstruction of the United States [is] a disaster," he said.   Iran does not recognize the state of Israel and has made support for Palestinian cause one of the pillars of its foreign policy since the Islamic Revolution of 1979.   The Security Council is composed of five permanent members with veto powers - China, France, Russia, the U.K. and the U.S. — and 10 nonpermanent members elected by the General Assembly for two-year terms.   The current nonpermanent members are Algeria, Ecuador, Guyana, Japan, Malta, Mozambique, South Korea, Sierra Leone, Slovenia and Switzerland.