At an emergency meeting of the United Nations Security Council convened after the United States and Israel launched strikes on Iran on February 28, representatives of Iran and Israel engaged in a heated exchange.

Iran: U.S.–Israel attacks are war crimes
Iran’s ambassador to the UN, Amir Saeid Iravani, said that on February 28 the U.S. administration, in coordination with Israel, had “initiated an unprovoked and deliberate attack against the Islamic Republic of Iran for the second time in recent months.”

Iravani claimed that hundreds of civilians were killed or injured, accusing the U.S. and Israel of targeting civilian infrastructure and killing more than 100 children at a school.

“The aggression and atrocities of the U.S. regime and the Israeli regime—and their deliberate, persistent targeting of civilian infrastructure—are ongoing. The number of innocent civilians continues to rise. This is not merely an act of aggression; it constitutes war crimes and crimes against humanity,” Iravani told the meeting.

He dismissed U.S. and Israeli justifications for the strikes as “illegal and entirely without legal basis,” arguing they carry no weight under international law.
“Invoking ‘preemptive self-defense,’ claims of imminent threats, or unfounded political assertions lack legal, moral, and political foundation,” he said.

Iravani described the campaign against Iran as a war against the United Nations Charter—against international law and the legal order on which the UN was founded eight decades ago.
“The actions of the United States and Israel meet none of the criteria for lawful self-defense. They constitute violations of Article 2,” he added.

In response, he said Iran is exercising its “inherent and legitimate” right of self-defense under Article 51 of the UN Charter and will continue to do so “without hesitation” until the aggression ends. He also stressed Tehran’s firm commitment to respecting the sovereignty and territorial integrity of neighboring countries.

Israel: Strikes on Iran were “necessary”
Israel’s ambassador to the UN, Danny Danon, countered that the actions taken by the U.S. and Israel were intended to stop “an existential threat before it became irreversible.”

Danon said Israel acted out of necessity and that joint efforts with Washington would continue as long as the threat persists.
“The [Iranian] regime has built nuclear weapons in defiance of international law, killed its own citizens and suppressed dissent, expanded its missile arsenal, armed proxy forces across the region, and declared its intent to wipe Israel off the map,” he alleged.

He argued that diplomacy had been exhausted, insisting Iran must halt uranium enrichment and allow full inspections.
“They are constructing the means to force us to accept an irreversible reality. That is not a future Israel can accept,” Danon said.