A representative for the U.S. stormed out of a defiant speech by Iranian President Masoud Pezeshkian on Wednesday at the United Nations General Assembly, during which he defended his country’s efforts in the ongoing war against the U.S. and lambasted President Donald Trump for “bullying” the Iranian people.
The official left just as Pezeshkian held up photos of people killed in the war — including Iranian Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei and students from the Shajareh Tayyebeh elementary school in Minab, who were killed in the joint U.S.-Israeli strikes when the war broke out Feb. 28.
“Yesterday the United States president described us as terrorists. We have been the victims of terrorism. I come from an Iran in which our esteemed supreme leader was assassinated without any legal framework or reason. I come from an Iran where, in truth, they bombed a school. You see these children? These children perished under bombs with weapons used by the United States and Israel,” Pezeshkian said, according to a translation of his address.
The U.S. representative who walked out appeared to be the only U.S. diplomat present for Pezeshkian’s address. They weren’t the only one who staged a walkout this week: the Cuban delegation abruptly walked out of Trump’s speech on Tuesday after he mentioned ongoing negotiations with its government.
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Pezeshkian ultimately said his country will not cave to a “language of force” but is ready for “dialog and diplomacy and negotiations.”
Trump threatened to “annihilate” Iran just a day prior during his own address to the U.N., and called on the international body to unite and eradicate what he called the “51-year menace of Iranian terror.”
Pezeshkian hit back Wednesday against Trump’s characterization of his country.
“We are sanctioned. We are punished. Those who are ill, innocent people, the poor, the least privileged in our society are the targets of these sanctions. And this is what the United States seeks to do with all countries: to sacrifice the population of a country in order to achieve her illegitimate goals,” he said.
The U.S. and Iran signed a memorandum of understanding in June, but broader negotiations to end the war appeared to stall as the two countries returned to fighting when the ceasefire collapsed.
U.S. envoy Steve Witkoff and Jared Kushner engaged with Iranian officials in an hourslong talk on the sidelines of the U.N. General Assembly in New York this week. Trump described the meeting as “very good” and said another talk is set to be “scheduled in the very near future.”
The Trump administration has repeatedly said that one of the U.S.’s main goals is to ensure that Iran never has a nuclear weapon. Pezeshkian declared on Wednesday that Iran “will not bow our head and give up the right that is inherently ours,” when speaking about the country’s domestic nuclear program.
He also argued that Iran had built up its weapons capabilities in order to defend themselves from adversaries, while maintaining that his country does “not seek anyone’s permission or approval” in order to defend their nation.
The Iranian president also spent a good portion of the address criticizing Israel for “savagely murdering” tens of thousands of people in Gaza, as well as the country’s role in the ongoing war.
“Israel kills, but Iran is subject to sanctions. This is a true tragedy, which would make anyone hearing it laugh, at best,” Pezeshkian said.
Iran is currently under heavy U.S. sanctions impacting its economic and energy sectors — with the penalties citing the country’s support for terrorism, concerns over nuclear proliferation and human rights abuses.
Pezeshkian argued that the international community deploys “double standard” for monitoring Iran and Israel’s nuclear capabilities.
“Israel has the bombs, has weapons of mass destruction, is not a member of the Non-Proliferation Treaty, during her shameful life has not allowed a single inspection, but they are rewarded by all the means necessary for them to be able to bomb any capital in the region at will,” Pezeshkian said.
Iran and 191 other countries are party to the Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons, an agreement signed decades ago to prevent the global spread of nuclear weapons. The International Atomic Energy Agency, which operates independently but reports to the U.N., is charged with inspecting and accounting for nuclear material.
Israel is not part of the NPT, so the country is not subject to the same IAEA inspection as Iran — though Israel is believed to be one of the nine countries that has access to nuclear weapons, according to the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute.
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