When the United States and Israel launched airstrikes on Iranian regime targets on February 28, the response from the UN\u2019s top human rights officials and agencies was swift and condemnatory, glossing over decades of Iranian aggression across the region and beyond. Yet when the regime was massacring protesters in the streets just weeks earlier, many of these same officials and agencies remained silent\u2014or spoke only after the worst atrocities had already occurred.<\/p>\n
Below is a sample of UN responses.<\/p>\n
Secretary-General Antonio Guterres<\/p>\n
The Secretary-General swiftly condemned<\/a> the U.S. and Israeli strikes on Iranian military targets, including its nuclear program. Although his statement referenced the Islamic regime\u2019s \u201csubsequent retaliation\u201d across \u201cthe region,\u201d by characterizing the Iranian counterstrikes as \u201cretaliation,\u201d Guterres conferred a measure of legitimacy upon them. When Israel launched strikes against Hamas targets in Gaza following the October 7 attack, however, no UN official described Israel\u2019s actions as \u201cretaliation.\u201d Instead, Israel\u2019s defensive response was condemned in the same terms and at the same level as the Hamas attack itself\u2014treating the aggressor and the responding state as morally and legally equivalent, and erasing the distinction between terrorism and a state\u2019s exercise of self-defense.<\/p>\n The statement also failed to name a single country targeted by Iran. In later remarks to the Security Council<\/a> Guterres stated that he had \u201calso condemned the subsequent attacks by Iran violating the sovereignty and territorial integrity of Bahrain, Iraq, Jordan, Kuwait, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, and the United Arab Emirates,\u201d notably omitting Israel from the list. His initial statement, however, was silent on the targets of Iran\u2019s strikes.<\/p>\n By contrast, while the Secretary-General immediately condemned Israel and the United States, he remained silent when the Iranian regime violently cracked down on protesters who began demonstrating against the government\u2019s economic policies on December 28, 2025. Security forces used live ammunition, tear gas, water cannons, and mass arrests. Even after the regime imposed a nationwide internet blackout on January 8, 2026\u2014widely understood as preparation for a large-scale massacre\u2014Guterres said nothing. He spoke publicly only on January 11, after reports had already emerged that the regime had killed tens of thousands of protesters. His statement<\/a> was notably restrained, expressing only \u201cshock\u201d at \u201creports of\u201d \u201cviolence and excessive use of force\u201d against protesters \u201cresulting in scores of deaths.\u201d He did not use the words \u201ccondemn,\u201d \u201ckill,\u201d or \u201cmurder.\u201d<\/p>\n \u00a0<\/p>\n High Commissioner for Human Rights, Volker Turk<\/p>\n Echoing the Secretary-General\u2019s statement, High Commissioner Volker T\u00fcrk immediately deplored<\/a> the U.S. and Israeli military strikes on Iran alongside the \u201csubsequent retaliatory strikes by Iran,\u201d without identifying the states targeted. By describing Iran\u2019s actions as \u201cretaliatory,\u201d he lent them implicit legitimacy.<\/p>\n Completely ignoring Iran\u2019s aggression across the region\u2014including its sponsorship of the Houthis in Yemen, militias in Iraq and Syria, Hezbollah in Lebanon, and Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad in the West Bank and Gaza\u2014T\u00fcrk pronounced that \u201cbombs and missiles are not the way to resolve differences but only result in death, destruction and human misery.\u201d This admonition is especially striking given that the Iranian regime is not merely a regional destabilizer but a government that has waged a decades-long campaign against American and Israeli targets worldwide and against its own dissidents abroad, including assassinations and murder-for-hire plots on European and American soil.<\/p>\n T\u00fcrk also expressed special concern for civilians, stating that \u201cas always, in any armed conflict, it is civilians who end up paying the ultimate price.\u201d He repeated this sentiment again on March 3, 2026 when he said<\/a> he was \u201cdeeply shocked by the impacts of the widespread hostilities on civilians and civilian infrastructure.\u201d<\/p>\n Yet when the Iranian regime began violently suppressing protesters on December 28, 2025, T\u00fcrk remained silent for 12 days. He said nothing when the government imposed a nationwide internet shutdown widely understood as preparation for a massacre of its own citizens. T\u00fcrk issued a statement<\/a> only on January 9, 2026\u2014after the killings had already begun\u2014saying he was merely \u201cdeeply disturbed\u201d by \u201creports\u201d of \u201cviolence during nationwide protests,\u201d including \u201creported deaths and destruction of property,\u201d and failing to condemn the government sanctioned killings. Only on January 13, 2026, did he finally state<\/a> that he was \u201chorrified by the mounting violence directed by security forces\u201d and that \u201cthe killing of peaceful demonstrators must stop.\u201d<\/p>\n \u00a0<\/p>\n Under-Secretary-General for Humanitarian Affairs and Emergency Relief Coordinator, Tom Fletcher\u00a0<\/p>\n After issuing two general statements on the humanitarian impact of the \u201cstrikes\u201d and the \u201cescalation in the Middle East\u201d on February 28<\/a> and March 3, 2026<\/a>, Under-Secretary-General for Humanitarian Affairs Tom Fletcher said on March 7<\/a> that \u201cit breaks my heart\u201d the \u201cstaggering amounts of money\u201d that are being spent on war in the Middle East instead of on humanitarian needs. Yet Fletcher said nothing about the staggering sums the Iranian regime devotes to financing terrorism across the region and violently suppressing its own people.<\/p>\n President of the UNGA, Annalena Baerbock<\/p>\n On February 28, 2026, UN General Assembly President Annalena Baerbock issued<\/a> a general condemnation of the \u201cextremely dangerous military escalation in the Middle East,\u201d calling on \u201cthe United States, Israel, and Iran to de-escalate\u201d and \u201cnot drag neighboring countries into this conflict.\u201d The statement did not specifically condemn Iran\u2019s attacks on its neighbors. In a March 5 statement<\/a>, however, Baerbock expressed her \u201ccondemnation\u201d of such attacks and made clear that it was \u201cunacceptable that Iran is dragging its neighbors into this conflict.\u201d Notably, Baerbock was silent when the Iranian regime violently suppressed protests across the country beginning on December 28, 2025, and massacred tens of thousands under the cover of an internet blackout imposed on January 8, 2026.<\/p>\n \u00a0<\/p>\n UNICEF\u00a0<\/p>\n While UNICEF\u2019s February 28, 2026 press release<\/a> expressed general concern about the \u201cmilitary escalation in the Middle East,\u201d it highlighted only the impact on children in Iran. A March 6, 2026 post on X, amplified by the UN, likewise lamented the impact of the \u201crecent military escalations\u201d on children, again focusing primarily on Iran. At the same time, UNICEF ignored the regime\u2019s killing of hundreds of children amid its broader massacre of tens of thousands of protesters. It also disregarded that targeted strikes on regime assets aim to end the repression that has already claimed so many young lives. Notably, UNICEF remained silent for two weeks after the regime began killing protesters, including children. Its Middle East and North Africa director, Edouard Beigbeder, spoke out only on January 11, 2026<\/a>\u2014after widespread reports of killings had already emerged.<\/p>\n \u00a0<\/p>\n WHO<\/p>\n WHO Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus responded immediately on February 28, 2026<\/a>, expressing concern about the \u201cgrave risks to people\u2019s health\u201d from the conflict \u201cexpanding across the Middle East,\u201d particularly the possibility that \u201cnuclear facilities\u201d could be impacted. His posts on X detailed the harm only in Iran<\/a> and Lebanon<\/a>. In a March 1 post<\/a>, he used the hashtag #NotATarget to criticize damage to a hospital in Tehran, implying that it had been deliberately targeted, even though the strikes were aimed at nearby military targets.<\/p>\n By contrast, despite his quick response and multiple X posts<\/a> on the health impact of the U.S. and Israeli strikes, Dr. Tedros remained silent on X for more than a month as the Iranian regime launched a brutal crackdown on protesters beginning December 28, 2025, threatening the health and lives of the Iranian people. When he finally spoke on January 29, 2026<\/a>, his statement was notably restrained, expressing only \u201cdeep concern\u201d about attacks on health workers and facilities without acknowledging the broader massacre.<\/p>\n \u00a0<\/p>\n UN Women<\/p>\n In a statement<\/a> issued on March 3, 2026, UN Women said it was \u201cgravely concerned\u201d about strikes on Iran. The statement added that \u201cwomen and girls everywhere have the right to live in safety and in peace, free from violence and discrimination.\u201d Yet when the Iranian regime beat, jailed, and killed tens of thousands of protesters just two months earlier\u2014including many women and girls\u2014UN Women remained silent for 26 days. It addressed the situation on X for the first time only on January 23, 2026<\/a>, not to condemn or even express concern, but merely to observe that \u201cWomen in #Iran have experienced enough violence.\u201d In 2021 UN Women even allowed the regime\u2014while it was jailing, beating, and killing women for refusing the hijab\u2014to sit on its Commission on the Status of Women.<\/p>\n UNESCO<\/p>\n In a March 1, 2026 statement<\/a>, UNESCO said it was \u201cdeeply alarmed\u201d by the impact of the \u201cmilitary escalation\u201d on schools and students, specifically citing the strike on a girls\u2019 school in Minab in southern Iran. The statement condemned the \u201ckilling of pupils\u201d as \u201ca grave violation\u201d of international humanitarian law, falsely implying that the school itself had been the intended target. Under international humanitarian law, however, the legal test is based on intent, not outcome, and there is no evidence that the United States intended this tragic result. Its thousands of strikes have clearly been aimed at the IRGC regime.<\/p>\n UNESCO expresses concern about schools only when doing so supports the regime. It has said nothing about the regime\u2019s practice<\/a> of placing military personnel inside civilian facilities, including schools and universities. An insider has even described a strategy to \u201cmanufacture casualties\u201d to sway Western public opinion.<\/p>\n On March 2, 2026, UNESCO issued a second statement<\/a>\u2014criticizing damage to a UNESCO World Heritage site in Tehran. Yet the organization entrusted with protecting global heritage has never said a word about Iranian missile attacks on Tel Aviv\u2019s White City of International Style (Bauhaus) buildings, designated a UNESCO World Heritage Site in 2003.<\/p>\n \u00a0<\/p>\n UN Fact-Finding Mission on Iran<\/p>\n In a March 4, 2026 statement<\/a>, the UN Fact-Finding Mission on Iran\u2014a panel of three supposedly independent experts\u2014said it \u201cstrongly condemns the strikes against Iran by Israel and the United States of America.\u201d While the statement ultimately said that Iran\u2019s counterstrikes violated the UN Charter, it nevertheless described them as \u201cretaliatory strikes,\u201d framing them as a response rather than unlawful aggression and thereby lending them a measure of implicit justification.<\/p>\n The panel also expressed concern for the \u201cIranian population\u201d\u2014\u201ccaught between a large-scale military campaign\u201d and \u201ca government with a long record of gross human rights violations\u201d\u2014yet had remained silent during the first two weeks of the regime\u2019s violent crackdown on protesters. The Fact-Finding Mission issued its first statement<\/a> only on January 10, 2026, after the government\u2019s internet shutdown had been in place for two days and reports of a massacre were already emerging. The statement did not condemn the killings, but merely called for the internet to be restored. Thus, even the UN body established to investigate the regime\u2019s atrocities against protesters chose instead to condemn the only effort aimed at weakening the regime responsible for those atrocities\u2014an intervention that many Iranian protesters themselves had called for.<\/p>\n Special ProceduresMai Sato, Special Rapporteur on the situation of human rights in the Islamic Republic of Iran<\/p>\n On March 4, 2026, the Special Rapporteur on Iran, Mai Saito, led a joint UN statement<\/a> by 30 Special Procedures. The statement \u201ccondemned\u201d the \u201cmilitary attacks launched by the United States of America and Israel against Iran\u201d as \u201cunlawful,\u201d yet expressed only \u201cserious concern\u201d over Iran\u2019s \u201cretaliatory strikes\u201d across \u201cthe Gulf and broader Middle East,\u201d failing to identify the countries targeted or the civilian harm caused. By characterizing Iran\u2019s strikes as \u201cretaliatory,\u201d the statement framed them as a response rather than unlawful aggression, thereby lending them implicit legitimacy.<\/p>\n The statement addressed civilian impact only in Iran. Dismissing the legitimate military rationale for the strikes and implying they were not aimed at military targets, it declared that \u201cthese attacks do not strike military abstractions\u2014they strike people.\u201d Despite the fact that many Iranian protesters had themselves called for U.S. intervention, the statement insisted that \u201cunlawful military intervention must not be seen as the solution to the grievances of the Iranian people.\u201d<\/p>\n This followed Saito\u2019s February 28, 2026<\/a> post on X stating that the \u201cUS-Israeli strikes\u201d were \u201cin violation of the UN Charter\u201d and similarly asserting that \u201cunlawful military intervention is not a solution to the nuclear issue or to the human rights situation in Iran.\u201d<\/p>\n Notably, Saito also led two joint statements addressing the Iranian regime\u2019s violent crackdown on protesters. The first, dated January 13, 2026<\/a>\u2014fully 16 days after the crackdown began\u2014was joined by only six other experts. The second, dated February 20, 2026<\/a>, was signed by 29 experts. This stands in sharp contrast to the speed with which Saito was able to assemble 30 experts to sign a statement condemning the United States and Israel just four days after their strikes.<\/p>\n \u00a0<\/p>\n Francesca Albanese, \u200b\u200bSpecial Rapporteur on the situation of human rights in the Palestinian territories occupied since 1967<\/p>\n One of the signatories to the March 4 joint UN statement was the UN Special Rapporteur on Palestine, Francesca Albanese. While refusing<\/a> to speak out on the massacre of Iranian protesters, claiming it was beyond her mandate, Albanese has never hesitated to defend the regime against attacks by the West.\u00a0<\/p>\n On March 3, 2026<\/a>, she posted a fake AI-generated image accusing the United States and Israel of deliberately bombing a girls\u2019 school in Iran, while also equating Israel and Iran as equally \u201cilliberal and brutal.\u201d Rather than retracting the image, Albanese doubled down, replying<\/a> that \u201cThe picture is not the issue: the facts are,\u201d and again insinuating that the school had been intentionally targeted and that the strike therefore constituted a \u201cwar crime.\u201d This stands in stark contrast to the standards<\/a> she is supposed to apply in establishing facts\u2014relying on \u201cobjective\u201d and \u201creliable\u201d information from \u201ccredible sources\u201d that has been \u201cduly cross-checked.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"When the United States and Israel launched airstrikes on Iranian regime targets on February 28, the response from…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":333885,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[85,46,43,164266],"class_list":["post-333884","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-israel","tag-il","tag-israel","tag-news","tag-pinned"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/333884","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=333884"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/333884\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/333885"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=333884"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=333884"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=333884"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}