Guterres warns of uncontrollable 'chain of events'

The US and Israel clashed with Iran in the UN Security Council as Secretary General Antonio Guterres warned that military action in the Middle East risks igniting uncontrollable “chain of events” in the world’s most volatile region. “We are witnessing a grave threat to international peace and security. Military action carries the risk of igniting a chain of events that no one can control in the most volatile region of the world,” Guterres told the emergency meeting of the UN Security Council Saturday. The powerful 15-nation UN body met just hours after the US and Israel launched military strikes against Iran and the subsequent attacks by Tehran.

VIDEO | During the emergency meeting to address the situation in Iran and the Middle East, United Nations Secretary-General Antonio Guterres says, "US and Israeli attacks followed indirect US-Iran talks; preparations made in Vienna followed by new round of political talks, deeply… pic.twitter.com/U9oC2RybnG

— Press Trust of India (@PTI_News) March 1, 2026

As the UNSC meeting was underway in the UN headquarters in New York, US President Donald Trump, currently in his Mar-a-Lago estate in Florida, announced the Ayatollah’s death in a post on Truth Social. Guterres asserted that the region and the world need a way out now and called for de-escalation and immediate cessation of hostilities. “The alternative is a potential wider conflict with grave consequences for civilians and regional stability,” he said.
In the UN meeting, the US and Israel clashed with Iran at the Security Council horse-shoe table, with Washington’s envoy telling the international community that “history has taught us that the cost of inaction is far greater than the burden of decisive action. And our President, President Trump, has taken that decisive action, Ambassador Mike Waltz, US Representative to the United Nations, said. "The international community has long affirmed a simple and necessary principle: Iran cannot have a nuclear weapon. That principle is not a matter of politics; it is a matter of global security. And to that end, the United States is taking lawful actions,” Waltz said, adding that “where the UN lacks moral clarity, the United States of America will maintain it.”
Israel's UN Ambassador Danny Danon told the Council that his country acted with the United States to "confront and stop an existential threat before it became irreversible." The operation targets nuclear infrastructure, ballistic missile sites, the machinery of repression that fuels terror across our region. We did not act of impulse. We did not act of aggression. We acted out of necessity, because the Iranian regime left no reasonable alternative. This joint effort will continue for as long as the threat remains,” Danon said. 
Iran’s ambassador to the UN Amir Saeid Iravani said the US and Israel "initiated an unprovoked and premeditated aggression” against his country for the second time in the recent months. He termed “the aggression and atrocious crime of the United States regime and the Israeli regime and the deliberate and persistent targeting of civilian infrastructure” as “not only an act of aggression, it is a war crime and a crime against humanity.” Iravani said the attack against a school in Minab, a city in the Hormozgan province of southern Iran killed more than 100 children.
Iravani and Waltz also engaged in a rare clash of words, with the Iranian envoy telling Waltz to be “polite" to which the American diplomat said “Frankly, I'm not going to dignify this with another response, especially as this representative sits here in this body, representing a regime that has killed tens of thousands of its own people and imprisoned many more simply for wanting freedom from your tyranny.”

IRAN'S REP TO THE UN: “I have one word only: I advise to the representative of the United States to be polite. It will be better for yourself and the country you represent.”

MIKE WALTZ: “I'm not going to dignify this with another response, especially, as this representative sits… pic.twitter.com/OGXRtItukW

— Fox News (@FoxNews) February 28, 2026