Esmaeil Baqaei made the remark in a post on his X account on Wednesday, referring to recent statements by UN Secretary General Antonio Guterres.
“Dag Hammarskjöld once warned against reducing the United Nations to static conference machinery in the service of great-power diplomacy, rather than a dynamic instrument for protecting the security of the small. He staked his entire tenure on that conviction,” Baqaei said.
“Today the Secretary General appears to be shrinking the Organization’s purpose to little more than ‘avoiding a war between superpowers’. That minimalist reading is both misleading and dangerous. It twists Article 2(4) into a doctrine that renders the overwhelming majority of the UN’s membership irrelevant, excuses almost every war, hollows out the Charter’s founding principles and purposes, and, worse, whitewashes the atrocities committed by so-called superpowers against everyone else.”
The Foreign Ministry spokesman added, “By that measure, wars & atrocities in Korea, Vietnam, the Congo, Iraq, Afghanistan, Yemen, Sudan and Gaza all count as successes.”
Baqaei wondered, “Is this an appropriate message for a Secretary General only months before the end of his tenure?”