WASHINGTON: United Nations Secretary-General Antonio Guterres on Wednesday condemned Iran’s missile attack on Israel, telling the Security Council the “deadly cycle of tit-for-tat violence must stop.”
“Time is running out,” he said. The 15-member council met after Israel killed the leader of Lebanon’s Hezbollah and began a ground assault against the Iran-backed militant group and Iran attacked Israel in a strike that raised fears of a wider war in West Asia.
Meanwhile, the Italian governmen, in a statement, said leaders of the Group of Seven (G7) democracies believed a diplomatic solution to the conflicts in the West Asia “is still possible”. The statement was released after Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni chaired a leaders’ call to discuss the crisis. “It was reiterated that a region-wide conflict is in no one’s interest and that a diplomatic solution is still possible,” the statement said.
The leaders also reiterated their “firm condemnation” of Iran’s attack on Israel.
Meanwhile, Iran’s Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei slammed the presence of American and European nations in West Asia in his first remarks since Tehran fired a barrage of ballistic missiles at Israel.
Khamenei said the presence of these nations was a source of “conflicts, wars, concerns and enmities”.
“Regional nations can manage themselves and … they will live together in peace,” Khamenei was quoted as saying by the official IRNA news agency.
Israel’s foreign minister said on Wednesday that he was barring Guterres from entering the country because he had not “unequivocally” condemned Iran’s missile attack on Israel.