Western countries ‘lack the moral credibility’ to criticize Iran: Tehran

Tehran on Thursday slammed the Western countries that called for an urgent UN Human Rights Council meeting on its crackdown on the protests rocking Iran, saying they lacked “moral credibility.”

The United States and European countries who pushed for Thursday’s meeting “lack the moral credibility to preach others on human rights and to request a special session on Iran,” Iran’s deputy of the vice president for women and family affairs, Khadijeh Karimi, told the council in Geneva.

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On Tuesday, the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights said that the situation in Iran was “critical,” describing a hardening of the authorities’ response to protests that have resulted in more than 300 deaths in the past two months.

“The rising number of deaths from protests in Iran, including those of two children at the weekend, and the hardening of the response by security forces, underline the critical situation in the country,” said a spokesperson for UN human rights chief Volker Turk at a Geneva news briefing.

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