Tehran Rejects UN ‘Protest Killings’ Resolution, Blasts Western Moralizing

Iran has flatly rejected a United Nations Human Rights Council resolution condemning what it described as the “violent crackdown on peaceful protests” by Iranian security forces, after two weeks of raging economic protests earlier this month, which also included a government enforced total internet shutdown.

Following a closed-door session in Geneva on Friday, 25 council members – including France, Japan, and South Korea – voted in favor of the formal censure.

But there were significant voices among the seven that voted against, including China, India, and Pakistan. Fourteen others abstained.

The council demanded that Tehran halt arrests linked to the protests and take steps to “prevent extrajudicial killing, other forms of arbitrary deprivation of life, enforced disappearance, sexual and gender-based violence.”

UN human rights chief Volker Türk told the council that “the brutality in Iran continued, creating conditions for further human rights violations, instability and bloodshed.”

Tehran blasted the resolution as another display of Western hypocrisy, arguing that the sponsors of the emergency session have never genuinely cared about human rights in Iran.

Iran’s envoy Ali Bahreini pushed back at the meeting, saying as follows:

“It was ironic that states whose history was stained with genocide and war crimes now attempted to lecture Iran on social governance and human rights.”

This past week in Davos for the World Economic Forum, there was an interesting moment where US Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent actually openly boasted that US sanctions helped drive the protests, after crippling the economy.

Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent argues that US sanctions on Iran were intended to cripple the economy so people would take to the streets: “This is economic statecraft, no shots fired”
* I made this argument last week, and was accused of spreading Iranian propaganda… pic.twitter.com/O3Q32WhWhh

— Glenn Diesen (@Glenn_Diesen) January 21, 2026

So Islamic Republic leaders are right to be skeptical when American, Israel, or European officials claims they ‘stand’ with the Iranian people, and seek ‘democracy’. Already, UN officials are invoking historical “genocide” instances and are dubiously comparing them with what’s going on in Iran:

A prosecutor said at least twice more people were killed in Iran in half the time compared with the Srebrenica genocide.

Iran’s Bahreini reiterated some of his government’s official casualty figures from clashes with police and security services, which were initially issued days ago via state sources. He said 3,117 people were killed during the unrest, but he also claimed that 2,427 of those deaths were caused by ”terrorists” – covertly funded by enemies of Iran – namely the United States, Israel, and their allies.