The UN chief and Egypt’s President delivered stinging speeches at a summit of developing nations in Iran yesterday, damaging the host country’s quest for global prestige and support for its nuclear programme and its policy on Syria.
The Iranians had to listen while Ban Ki-moon denounced them for calling for Israel’s destruction and denying the Holocaust.
Nor did Mohamed Mursi, the first Egyptian leader to visit Iran since the 1979 Islamic Revolution, hold back as he urged Non-Aligned Movement members to back Syrians trying to topple Bashar al-Assad, Iran’s closest Arab ally.
“I strongly reject threats by any member state to destroy another, or outrageous attempts to deny historical facts such as the Holocaust,” Mr Ban said. “Claiming that Israel does not have the right to exist or describing it in racist terms is not only wrong but undermines the very principle we pledged to uphold.”
Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad has repeatedly denied the Holocaust and this month called Israel a “cancerous tumour”.
Deputy Israeli Foreign Minister Danny Ayalon said Mr Ban would have conveyed a stronger message by boycotting the NAM summit. “Going there harmed the message and sabotaged the critical efforts to stop illegal Iranian nuclear activity.”
But Meir Javedanfar, an Iranian-Israeli expert at the Inter-Disciplin-ary Centre in Herzliya, Israel, said Mr Mursi and Mr Ban deserved credit for their blunt remarks.
“Mursi’s statement on Syria will be viewed as a serious challenge against Iran’s narrative on Syria,” he said, adding that Israel should thank Mr Ban for speaking out so clearly.
“In the history of the Islamic Republic, nobody has challenged the supreme leader’s (Ayatollah Ali Khamenei’s) position on Israel in front of him, like this.”
In his speech Ayatollah Khamenei criticised the UN Security Council as a tool used by the US “to impose its bullying manner on the world ”.
“Our motto is nuclear energy for all and nuclear weapons for none,” he told the conference, a day after Mr Ban urged him to prove that Iran’s nuclear work is peaceful.
A report from the UN nuclear watchdog this week is likely to voice concern about the Parchin military complex southeast of Tehran, to which its inspectors have been denied access.
The International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) believes Iran has conducted nuclear-related explos-ives tests at Parchin. The West says satellite images suggest Iran has cleaned the site, which it says is a conventional military facility.
The IAEA’s new quarterly report will say Iran has installed more than 300 new uranium enrichment centrifuges at its Fordow underground site since May, Vienna-based diplomats say.