Iran

Iran's Foreign Ministry spokesman Esmaeil Baghaei has sharply criticized the United Nations' human rights mechanism on Iran, accusing it of serving as a deliberate tool to deflect attention from the crimes committed by the United States and Israel against the Islamic Republic. In a post on X on Wednesday, Baqaei condemned the mandate of the UN Special Rapporteur on the Situation of Human Rights in Iran, Mai Sato, describing it as a "politically motivated" measure "imposed on the Human Rights Council by the UK."

"Exploiting the so-called Special Rapporteurship on the Situation of Human Rights in Iran to blame Iran for the crimes committed by the US and Israel amounts to nothing less than a deliberate attempt to whitewash aggression, atrocities, and unilateral coercive measures," Baqaei wrote. The spokesman went on to denounce the approach as "deeply misleading and profoundly disingenuous," arguing that the mechanism was being weaponized to shift blame onto Iran while ignoring the military aggression and economic warfare waged against the country by Washington and Tel Aviv.

Baqaei's remarks came in response to a report presented by Sato to the UN General Assembly on Wednesday. In her report, Sato acknowledged that US and Israeli wars had compounded the suffering of the Iranian people, but went on to accuse Tehran of exploiting the war to intensify what she described as a crackdown on domestic dissent through arrests and executions. Tehran has consistently rejected the mandate of the Special Rapporteur on Iran as a politically motivated instrument used by Western powers to pressure the Islamic Republic, arguing that the mechanism systematically ignores the human rights consequences of illegal sanctions, military threats, and acts of aggression imposed on the Iranian nation.