Iran (IMNA) - Speaking at the 62nd session of the UN Human Rights Council under Agenda Item 2 in Geneva on June 15, Iran’s Permanent Representative to the UN Office and other International Organizations in Geneva, Ali Bahreini, said Tehran accepted a ceasefire out of responsibility for regional peace despite continued pressure and threats.
He also defended Iran’s military response as an exercise of self-defense under international law and called for accountability, reparations, and justice for victims of the conflict.
The full text of his speech reads as follow:
Mr. President,
Today marks the first anniversary of the aggression of United States and Israel Regime against the Islamic Republic of Iran on June 2025. We pay solemn tribute to the more than one thousands innocent victims of the 12 days’ war and the 40 days’ war against Iran. We also honor those victims and survivors of these invasions whose suffering was met with the silence of many countries and whose calls for justice went unheard.
Since June 2025, the people of Iran have lived either under the direct assault of unprecedented military attacks or under the constant shadow of threats of further aggression and longer blockade. Yet, those who so often claim the mantle of human rights advocacy have remained conspicuously silent. This sense of injustice was compounded when the Human Rights Council chose to adopt resolution 61/1 against a country that itself is the victim of aggression. The very presentation of today's oral update pursuant to that resolution illustrates a troubling inversion of roles, whereby the distinction between victim and aggressor has become blurred. In our view, this development raises serious questions about the consistency, impartiality, and credibility of the international human rights system, particularly when those who have endured the consequences of conflict find themselves placed in the dock while the origins of that conflict remain insufficiently scrutinized.
Today, after one year of remarkable resistance, I want to glorify the resilience of the great Iranian. They are a people who refused to barter their dignity, independence, convictions, and right to self-determination.
Mr. President,
In a moment when our territory was under grave threat of invasion, our officials including our supreme leader were assassinated, our people were under indiscriminate aerial bombardments, our children in schools like MINAB, faced the terror of precision and staged strikes, and in a time that our innocent women and girls like those in LAMARD were torn apart by under testing PRMS missiles (Precision Strike Missiles), what course of action could reasonably be expected of us, other than the exercise of our inherent right to self-defense in accordance with international law?
We were not subjected to attacks originating from distant continents, but from territories in our immediate vicinity. Our response was therefore directed at the sources of the imminent threat, in exercise of the inherent right of self-defense as recognized under international law. Our actions were aimed at neutralizing an ongoing and imminent danger, with the sole objective of further escalation and protecting our territorial integrity and civilian population.
The Persian Gulf is a strategic space whose security is indivisible. Like a single vessel at sea, a breach in one part ultimately imperils the integrity of the whole. The security of our region must be built by the countries of the region themselves, through cooperation and mutual respect, rather than through the intervention and influence of external powers. If Iran ultimately accepted the ceasefire, despite its imperfections and subsequent challenges, it did so out of a profound sense of responsibility toward regional peace and collective security.
Finally, we brought the war to an end so that we would never again have to hear the roar of advanced and indiscriminate weapons over schools and students; and so that mothers like Makan Nasiri’s mother—who, months after the attack on the Minab school, still has not found any trace of her child—would no longer be left waiting for the discovery of even fragments of their children's remains.
But the end of war must mark the beginning of accountability and the provision of effective remedies, reparation, and redress. This requires meaningful efforts to acknowledge harm, provide adequate compensation, support rehabilitation, and restore the dignity of victims and their families. Such measures are indispensable not only for addressing the consequences of past violations, but also for ensuring their non-repetition.
Thank you.
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