Iran on Friday accused the United States and Israel of carrying out a “deliberate and intentional” attack on a girls’ school in southern Iran, calling it a “war crime” and “crime against humanity,” during an address to the 61st session of the United Nations Human Rights Council in Geneva.
Abbas Araghchi, Minister of Foreign Affairs of Iran, warned that continued silence by the international community would undermine global institutions and norms.
“The United Nations and the core values it embodies… are at serious stake,” he said, urging member states to “call out the aggressors and let them know that the community of States… hold them accountable for the abhorrent crimes they are committing against Iranians.”
“Iran has never sought war… yet it has demonstrated absolute resolve and determination to defend itself,” he added, saying such defense “shall persist as long as needed.”
Speaking at an urgent debate, Iranian Foreign Minister Seyed Abbas Araghchi said Iran was “amid the throes of an illegal war imposed by two bullying nuclear armed regimes, the United States and Israel,” describing the conflict as “blatantly unjustified and brutal.”
He said the hostilities began on February 28 while Tehran and Washington were engaged in diplomatic talks, adding that the United States had “betrayed diplomacy for a second time in the course of nine months by torpedoing the negotiating table.”
Araghchi alleged that a “calculated, phased assault” targeted the Shajare Tayyebe Elementary School in Minab, in southern Iran, where “more than 175 students and teachers were slaughtered in cold blood.”
“At a time when the American-Israeli aggressors… possess the most advanced technologies… no one can believe that the attack on the school was anything other than deliberate and intentional,” he said.
“Targeting Shajare Tayyebe School was a war crime and a crime against humanity—one that demands unequivocal condemnation by all and unambiguous accountability for the culprits,” he added.
The minister stressed that the attack “cannot be justified, cannot be concealed, and must not be met with silence and indifference,” rejecting any suggestion that it was a mistake. “It was not a mere ‘incident’ nor a ‘miscalculation’,” he said.
Iran also alleged widespread strikes on civilian infrastructure during the conflict.
“Human rights and international humanitarian law have been massively and systematically violated,” Araghchi said, accusing US and Israeli forces of “targeting civilians and civilian infrastructures with no regard for laws of war.”
He claimed that “more than 600 schools have been demolished or damaged across Iran” and that “more than 1,000 students and teachers [have been] martyred or wounded.”
According to him, hospitals, ambulances, health workers, Red Crescent rescuers, water sources and residential areas had also been hit.
“The aggressors… shouting ‘no mercy, no quarters’… have been attacking hospitals… and residential areas,” he said, adding that the pattern of attacks “leave little doubt as to their clear intent to commit genocide.”
