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How António Guterres Betrayed the Jews

United Nations Secretary-General Antonio Guterres speaks at the UN headquarters in New York City, US, before a meeting about the conflict in Gaza, Nov. 6, 2023. Photo: REUTERS/Caitlin Ochs

JNS.org – Back in February, U.N. Secretary-General António Guterres delivered a speech at the Ohel Jakob synagogue in Munich in which he struck most of the right notes.

Guterres acknowledged what Israel’s most diehard adversaries never will—that the Jewish people are indigenous to the historic Land of Israel. “I was in Masada,” he said. “And I lived the feeling of the Jewish people about the expulsion of the Roman Empire in the first century and how the Jewish community has spread in the Roman Empire but, since the beginning, became in the different areas of the empire, victims of different forms of segregation, discrimination and persecution.”

Antisemitism, Guterres also observed, “was not born with the Nazis and did not die with the Nazis.” Referring to his native Portugal, which expelled its Jewish population at the beginning of the 16th century, the U.N. chief bemoaned this “criminal” and “stupid” act for causing suffering to Jews and impoverishing the country culturally and economically. And, he continued, “antisemitism is unfortunately spreading today. It has had, I would say, a clear acceleration since the horrific attacks of Hamas on the seventh of October, but it was already a central concern for us in the last decades. We have seen how it was multiplying both online and offline with all kinds of manifestations, desecration of cemeteries, personal attacks on people, vicious actions online, and worst, an attempt to rewrite history.”

All of this is in keeping with Guterres’s previous comments on the issue, including his determination in 2017 that the “denial of Israel’s right to exist is antisemitism,” which is an enormously significant statement for the head of the world’s most thoroughly and consistently anti-Israel body. Additionally, during the coronavirus pandemic, Guterres spoke out more than once against the antisemitic memes that spread like wildfire in the “covidiocy” camp of anti-vaxxers and allied conspiracy theorists.

Yet there is one aspect of this issue on which he has remained silent. And that is the antisemitism that stains the organization he leads.

When Guterres rightly identified calls for Israel’s elimination as antisemitism—a contention that has been proven ad nauseam in the months since the Oct. 7 pogrom—it would have been natural for him, intellectually speaking, to examine how the United Nations has contributed to legitimizing this demand. In 1975, at the behest of the Soviet Union and its Arab allies, the U.N. General Assembly passed a resolution decrying Zionism as a form of racism, already established as a staple of Soviet propaganda. In the same year, the United Nations created a Division for Palestinian Rights dedicated to promoting and amplifying the themes in that resolution. Alongside this network is a so-called humanitarian agency, UNRWA, which is solely dedicated to Palestinian refugees and their descendants. No other dispossessed or persecuted people, inside or outside the Middle East, has been handed the same privilege. UNRWA has certainly risen to the occasion, spreading antisemitic ideology in the schools it runs and even employing Palestinians who participated in the Oct. 7 atrocities.

Then you have the U.N. Human Rights Council, which dedicates an entire agenda item to vilifying Israel, and which periodically pushes out ugly, unsubstantiated attacks on Israel through the guise of “independent experts.” One such report was released just last week by a team of three commissioners, one of whom, Miloon Kothari, famously accused the “Jewish Lobby” of controlling social media (if only, eh?)

In an environment like this one, it’s hardly surprising that Israel now finds itself on a blacklist with the Democratic Republic of Congo, Russia, Burma/Myanmar, Somalia, Sudan, South Sudan and Yemen as states whose militaries systemically abuse children. Yet what is noteworthy here is that this list is provided by Guterres’ own office, which produces the annual “Children in Armed Conflict” report.

Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad also made the list, rubbing salt into the wound by equating Israel’s military with a bunch of murderers, rapists and deviants who derive pleasure from mutilating the dead and similarly bestial acts. Again, there is nothing remarkable about the world body drawing such a grotesque comparison. What is noteworthy is that it carries the endorsement of Guterres, who goes out of his way to portray himself as an ally of Jews when he speaks to Jewish audiences, but then doggedly sticks to the anti-Zionist script once he returns to Turtle Bay.

Because if Guterres really did believe in the points he made during his Munich speech, then he would not have assented to Israel’s inclusion on the blacklist. If he really appreciated the centrality of Israel as an anchor of security for Jews the world over, if he really grasped the mass trauma provoked by Oct. 7 for Israelis and Jews around the world alike, if he really knew in every fiber of his being that the Jewish people have only this one country that is currently facing a campaign of deadly violence orchestrated by Iran and its regional proxies, then Israel would not be sharing space with militaries whose sole raison d’être is the murder, torture and wholesale destruction of innocent civilians.

That is why Jews have every right to feel betrayed by Guterres. At least his predecessors, who included the late Austrian Nazi Kurt Waldheim, never raised our expectations and never cheated us into thinking that the United Nations was changing direction on Israel. Guterres dangled precisely that hope and then snatched it away.

Now he has lent his imprimatur to one of the worst antisemitic blood libels to emerge from the halls of the United Nations—and there have been many. The twisted logic that places Israel on such a list could easily be applied to the United States, the United Kingdom and France—all permanent U.N. Security Council members whose militaries have faced war-crime charges in countries like Algeria, Iraq and Afghanistan. But only Israel faces this treatment because targeting the Jewish state has become routinized and normalized in the U.N. setting.

That will only change when a successor to Guterres honestly appraises the world body’s own record of antisemitism and pledges to end it, first of all by dismantling all the elements—the committees, the various “independent” commissions, the anti-Israel agenda items set in stone—that contribute to this institutional bias. Only then can Jews gain any kind of trust in the United Nations. And that, for the foreseeable future, isn’t going to happen.

The post How António Guterres Betrayed the Jews first appeared on Algemeiner.com.

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Iran Turns to Internal Crackdown in Wake of 12-Day War With Israel

People walk near a mural of Iran’s Supreme Leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, amid the Iran-Israel conflict, in Tehran, Iran, June 23, 2025. Photo: Majid Asgaripour/WANA (West Asia News Agency) via REUTERS

Iranian authorities are pivoting from a ceasefire with Israel to intensify an internal security crackdown across the country with mass arrests, executions, and military deployments, particularly in the restive Kurdish region, officials and activists said.

Within days of Israel‘s airstrikes beginning on June 13, Iranian security forces started a campaign of widespread arrests accompanied by an intensified street presence based around checkpoints, the officials and activists said.

Some in Israel and exiled opposition groups had hoped the military campaign, which targeted Revolutionary Guards and internal security forces as well as nuclear sites, would spark a mass uprising and the overthrow of the Islamic Republic.

While Reuters has spoken to numerous Iranians angry at the government for policies they believed had led to the Israeli attack, there has been no sign yet of any significant protests against the authorities.

However, one senior Iranian security official and two other senior officials briefed on internal security issues said the authorities were focused on the threat of possible internal unrest, particularly in Kurdish areas.

Revolutionary Guard and Basij paramilitary units were put on alert and internal security was now the primary focus, said the senior security official.

The official said authorities were worried about Israeli agents, ethnic separatists, and the People’s Mujahideen Organization, an exiled opposition group that has previously staged attacks inside Iran.

Activists within the country are lying low.

“We are being extremely cautious right now because there’s a real concern the regime might use this situation as a pretext,” said a rights activist in Tehran who was jailed during mass protests in 2022.

The activist said he knew dozens of people who had been summoned by authorities and either arrested or warned against any expressions of dissent.

Iranian rights group HRNA said on Monday it had recorded arrests of 705 people on political or security charges since the start of the war.

Many of those arrested have been accused of spying for Israel, HRNA said. Iranian state media reported three were executed on Tuesday in Urmia, near the Turkish border, and the Iranian-Kurdish rights group Hengaw said they were all Kurdish.

Iran’s Foreign and Interior Ministries did not immediately respond to requests for comment.

CHECKPOINTS AND SEARCHES

One of the officials briefed on security said troops had been deployed to the borders of Pakistan, Iraq, and Azerbaijan to stop infiltration by what the official called terrorists. The other official briefed on security acknowledged that hundreds had been arrested.

Iran’s mostly Sunni Muslim Kurdish and Baluch minorities have long been a source of opposition to the Islamic Republic, chafing against rule from the Persian-speaking, Shi’ite government in Tehran.

The three main Iranian Kurdish separatist factions based in Iraqi Kurdistan said some of their activists and fighters had been arrested and described widespread military and security movements by Iranian authorities.

Ribaz Khalili from the Democratic Party of Iranian Kurdistan (KDPI) said Revolutionary Guards units had deployed in schools in Iran’s Kurdish provinces within three days of Israel‘s strikes beginning and gone house-to-house for suspects and arms.

The Guards had taken protective measures too, evacuating an industrial zone near their barracks and closing major roads for their own use in bringing reinforcements to Kermanshah and Sanandaj, two major cities in the Kurdish region.

A cadre from the Free Life Party of Kurdistan (PJAK), who gave her nom de guerre of Fatma Ahmed, said the party had counted more than 500 opposition members being detained in Kurdish provinces since the airstrikes began.

Ahmed and an official from the Kurdish Komala party, who spoke on condition of anonymity, both described checkpoints being set up across Kurdish areas with physical searches of people as well as checks of their phones and documents.

The post Iran Turns to Internal Crackdown in Wake of 12-Day War With Israel first appeared on Algemeiner.com.

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Trump Declares Iran-Israel Ceasefire a ‘Victory for Everybody’

US President Donald Trump speaks at a meeting with NATO Secretary General Mark Rutte (not pictured), at the NATO summit in The Hague, Netherlands, June 25, 2025. Photo: REUTERS/Brian Snyder

US President Donald Trump hailed the swift end to war between Iran and Israel and said Washington would likely seek a commitment from Tehran to end its nuclear ambitions at talks with Iranian officials next week.

Trump said his decision to join Israel’s attacks by targeting Iranian nuclear sites with huge bunker-busting bombs had ended the war, calling it “a victory for everybody.”

“It was very severe. It was obliteration,” he said, shrugging off an initial assessment by the US Defense Intelligence Agency that Iran‘s path to building a nuclear weapon may have been set back only by months.

Speaking in The Hague where he attended a NATO summit on Wednesday, he said he did not see Iran getting involved again in developing nuclear weapons. Tehran has always denied decades of accusations by Western leaders that it is seeking nuclear arms.

“We’re going to talk to them next week, with Iran. We may sign an agreement. I don’t know. To me, I don’t think it’s that necessary,” Trump said.

Anxious Iranians and Israelis sought to resume normal life after the most intense confrontation ever between the two foes.

Israel’s nuclear agency assessed the strikes had “set back Iran‘s ability to develop nuclear weapons by many years.” The White House also circulated the Israeli assessment, although Trump said he was not relying on Israeli intelligence.

He said he was confident Tehran would pursue a diplomatic path towards reconciliation.

“I’ll tell you, the last thing they want to do is enrich anything right now. They want to recover,” he said.

If Iran tried to rebuild its nuclear program, “We won’t let that happen. Number one, militarily we won’t,” he said, adding that he thought “we’ll end up having something of a relationship with Iran” to resolve the issue.

The head of the UN’s nuclear watchdog, Rafael Grossi, dismissed what he called the “hourglass approach” of assessing damage to Iran‘s nuclear program in terms of months needed to rebuild as besides the point for an issue that needed a long-term solution.

“In any case, the technological knowledge is there, and the industrial capacity is there. That, no one can deny. So, we need to work together with them,” he said. His priority was returning international inspectors to Iranian nuclear sites, which he said was the only way to find out precisely what state they were in.

Israel’s bombing campaign, launched with a surprise attack on June 13, wiped out the top echelon of Iran‘s military leadership and killed leading nuclear scientists. Iran responded with missiles that pierced Israel’s defenses in significant numbers for the first time.

Iranian authorities said 627 people were killed and nearly 5,000 injured in Iran, where the extent of the damage could not be independently confirmed because of tight restrictions on media. Twenty-eight people were killed in Israel.

Israel claimed to have achieved its goals of destroying Iran‘s nuclear sites and missiles.

Trump said both sides were exhausted but the conflict could restart.

Israel’s demonstration that it could target Iran‘s senior leadership seemingly at will poses perhaps the biggest challenge yet for Iran‘s clerical rulers, at a critical juncture when they must find a successor for Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei, now 86 and in power for 36 years.

President Masoud Pezeshkian, a relative moderate elected last year in a challenge to years of dominance by hardliners, said it could result in reform.

“This war and the empathy that it fostered between the people and officials is an opportunity to change the outlook of management and the behavior of officials so that they can create unity,” he said in a statement carried by state media.

Still, Iran‘s authorities moved swiftly to demonstrate their control. The judiciary announced the execution of three men on Wednesday convicted of collaborating with Israel’s Mossad spy agency and smuggling equipment used in an assassination. Iran had arrested 700 people accused of ties with Israel during the conflict, the state-affiliated Nournews reported.

During the war, both Netanyahu and Trump publicly suggested that it could end with the toppling of Iran‘s entire system of clerical rule, established in its 1979 revolution.

But after the ceasefire, Trump said he did not want to see “regime change” in Iran, which he said would bring chaos at a time when he wanted the situation to settle down.

The post Trump Declares Iran-Israel Ceasefire a ‘Victory for Everybody’ first appeared on Algemeiner.com.

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UN Nuclear Chief Says It’s Possible Iran’s Highly Enriched Uranium ‘Is There’

International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) Director General Rafael Grossi arrives on the opening day of the agency’s quarterly Board of Governors meeting at the IAEA headquarters in Vienna, Austria, Nov. 20, 2024. Photo: REUTERS/Lisa Leutner

There is a chance that much of Iran’s highly enriched uranium survived Israeli and US attacks because it may have been moved by Tehran soon after the first strikes, UN nuclear watchdog chief Rafael Grossi said on Wednesday.

Israel repeatedly struck Iranian nuclear facilities during its 12-day war with Tehran, and US forces bombed Iran’s underground nuclear facilities at the weekend, but the extent of the damage to its stocks of enriched uranium is unclear.

International Atomic Energy Agency chief Grossi said earlier this week that Iran had informed the IAEA on June 13 – the first day of Israeli strikes – that it would take “special measures” to protect its nuclear materials and equipment.

“They did not get into details as to what that meant but clearly that was the implicit meaning of that, so we can imagine that this material is there,” Grossi told a press conference on Wednesday with members of the Austrian government.

“So, for that, to confirm, for the whole situation, evaluation, we need to return [IAEA inspectors to Iran’s nuclear facilities].”

He said ensuring the resumption of IAEA inspections was his top priority as none had taken place since the bombing began although Iran’s parliament approved moves on Wednesday to suspend such inspections.

The IAEA needs to determine how much remains of Iran’s stock of uranium enriched to up to 60 percent purity – a level that is close to the roughly 90 percent of weapons grade.

Uranium enrichment has both civilian and military applications. Iran has always denied seeking nuclear weapons and says its nuclear program is solely for peaceful purposes.

The IAEA says no other country has enriched to such a high level without producing nuclear weapons, and Western powers say there is no civil justification for it.

‘HOURGLASS APPROACH’

The last quarterly IAEA report on May 31 indicated that Iran had, according to an IAEA yardstick, enough uranium enriched to up to 60 percent purity for nine nuclear weapons if enriched further. It has enough for more bombs at lower enrichment levels such as 20 percent and 5 percent, the report showed.

A preliminary US intelligence assessment determined that the US strikes at the weekend set back Tehran’s program by only a matter of months, meaning Iran could restart its nuclear program in that time, three sources with knowledge of the matter told Reuters on Tuesday.

“This hourglass approach is something I do not like … It’s in the eye of the beholder,” Grossi said.

“When you look at the … reconstruction of the infrastructure, it’s not impossible. First, there has been some that survived the attacks, and then this is work that Iran knows how to do. It would take some time.”

Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araqchi said on Tuesday that Tehran’s view on the nuclear program and the non-proliferation regime would now “witness changes, but it is not possible to say in what direction.”

Iran’s parliament approved a bill on Wednesday on suspending cooperation with the IAEA and stipulating that any future IAEA inspection would need approval by Iran’s Supreme National Security Council. The bill still requires approval by Iran’s unelected Guardian Council to become law.

Parliament Speaker Mohammad Baqer Qalibaf was quoted by state media as saying the IAEA “has put its international credibility up for sale” and that Iran would accelerate its civilian nuclear program.

“This would be, of course, very regrettable,” Grossi said of Iran’s threat to withdraw from the nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT).

“I hope this is not the case. I don’t think this would help anybody, starting with Iran. This would lead to isolation and all sorts of problems and, why not, perhaps, if not the unravelling a very, very, very serious erosion in the NPT structure,” he said.

The post UN Nuclear Chief Says It’s Possible Iran’s Highly Enriched Uranium ‘Is There’ first appeared on Algemeiner.com.

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