UNITED NATIONS, April 3. /TASS/. Moscow has circulated a UN Security Council draft statement condemning Israel’s strike on the Iranian consulate in Damascus, Russian First Deputy Permanent Representative to the UN Dmitry Polyansky said.
"As a result of discussions and based on an agreement with our Iranian and Syrian colleagues, we circulated a Security Council draft statement to the media, which condemns what happened," he wrote on Telegram. "This is another opportunity to test the real intentions of our Western colleagues. We’ll see how work on the document goes," Polyansky added.
Polyansky noted that "the Security Council last discussed a similar incident 25 years ago, when a NATO strike destroyed the Chinese embassy building in Belgrade."
The Russian diplomat expressed regret that "the UN Secretariat failed to either condemn or make a direct assessment of" Israel’s actions. "The Western ‘trio’ was talking about anything but the airstrike on the diplomatic facility," he noted.
"[We] stressed that if the situation continues to escalate, the US, the United Kingdom and France would be to blame as they could not bring themselves to condemn Israel’s attack," the Russian first deputy permanent representative to the UN said.
Attack on Iranian diplomatic facility
On April 2, the UN Security Council held an open meeting on Israel’s strike on Iran’s diplomatic facility in Damascus. The meeting was initiated by Russia. Earlier, Iran’s mission to the UN slammed the attack as a blatant violation of the UN Charter and called on the UN Security Council to condemn it.
The Syrian Arab News Agency (SANA) reported on April 1 that the Israeli Air Force had carried out a strike on a building in the Syrian capital of Damascus. Iranian media outlets said that the country’s consulate had come under attack. Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) said in a statement that the strike had killed seven military advisors, including General Mohammad Reza Zahedi and General Mohammad Hadi Haji-Rahimi. According to Iran’s government-run IRIB TV channel, Zahedi commanded the units of the IRGC Al-Quds Force in Lebanon and Syria. Iranian President Ebrahim Raisi vowed that the attack on the country’s consulate would not go unanswered. An Israel Defense Forces (IDF) spokesperson declined a request from TASS to comment on reports about the Israeli strike on Damascus.