TEHRAN – Iran on Monday said it will not cooperate with a UN fact-finding mission on its response to recent foreign-backed riots in the country due to the investigation’s “political” nature.
Tehran will have “no form of cooperation with this political committee which has been framed as a fact-finding committee”, Foreign Ministry spokesman Nasser Kanaani told reporters during a news conference.
Last week, Iran announced it had formed a local fact-finding mission, comprised of representatives from the government, the judiciary, the parliament and others, to investigate “events, riots and unrest” during the past few weeks.
According to Kanaani, this constituted a “responsible” act by the Iranian state and refuted any need for a UN investigation.
The UN investigation was “taking advantage of human rights mechanisms to exert political pressure on independent countries,” Kanaani said.
The UN Human Rights Council last week voted to establish a fact-finding mission to investigate potential “abuses” in Iran’s handling of the riots during which security and medical personnel and public property were violently targeted.
Of the 47-member council, 25 voted in favor of the anti-Iran resolution. There were 16 abstentions and six nations – Armenia, China, Cuba, Eritrea, Pakistan and Venezuela – voted against the measure.
Along with Iceland, Germany presented the formal call for the formation of the special UN council meeting on Iran that led to the passage of the resolution.
Top Iranian officials have repeatedly said the United States, the occupying regime of Israel, the United Kingdom, France, Germany and Saudi Arabia of are behind the country’s unrest.
Kanaani said Iran has proof that Western nations were involved in the riots. “We have specific information proving that the U.S., Western countries and some of the American allies have had a role in the protests.”
Iran on Monday summoned the German ambassador to protest last week’s UN Human Rights Council decision.
It is the third time since the riots started more than two months ago that Tehran has called in Berlin’s representative to the Islamic Republic.
IRNA said Iran’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs had called in Germany’s ambassador, Hans-Udo Muzel, “following the initiative of Germany to hold a special session” of the UN rights council “about the recent events in our country.”
Iran on Friday said it “totally rejects” the “useless” resolution and would not recognize the fact-finding mission created by the rights council.
The foreign ministry reiterated this argument on Monday.
“The hasty and instrumentalized use of the human rights question and the adoption of political approaches to pressure independent countries should definitively be condemned,” Kanaani said.
“These actions will not contribute to the promotion of human rights.”
In late October Iran’s foreign ministry summoned Muzel to protest comments by German officials which “incite riots” in the Islamic Republic.
Earlier this month, the ministry again called in Berlin’s representative following remarks by German Chancellor Olaf Scholz against the Islamic Republic.
An Iranian foreign ministry official condemned those remarks and protested Germany’s “destructive attitude.”
Other ambassadors, including from France and Britain, have also been called in over the past few weeks.
During his news conference, the Iranian foreign ministry spokesman carried a black gas mask and held the session with the mask on his podium.
It was meant as a reminder of the use of chemical weapons by Saddam Hussein during his eight-year war on Iran in the 1980s.
Tehran has long accused Germany of supplying Hussein with chemical weapons. Kanaani said up to 80 percent of the chemical weapons used during the war were supplied by German companies.
In its blacklisting of European individuals and entities in response to European Union sanctions last month, Tehran imposed sanctions on two German companies that it said were responsible for “delivering chemical gases and weapons” to Iraq during the war.
The riots broke out following protests held over the death of 22-year-old woman Mahsa Amini in hospital on September 16, three days after she collapsed at a police station.
An investigation has attributed Amini’s death to her medical condition, rather than alleged beatings by the police.
The riots have claimed the lives of dozens of people and security forces. In the last two months, terrorists have set fire to public property and tortured several Basij members and security forces to death.
On October 26, a Daesh-affiliated terrorist attacked the Shah Cheragh shrine in the southern province of Fars before the evening prayers, martyring at least 13 pilgrims — including a woman and two children — and injuring 40 others.
At least seven people were also martyred after terrorists opened fire at people and security forces at a crowded market in Khuzestan province’s Izeh around sunset.