Security personnel at the United Nations briefly detained Israel’s UN ambassador on Tuesday after he staged a dramatic walkout during Iranian President Ebrahim Raisi’s speech to the UN General Assembly, Fox News reported.
As President Raisi delivered his speech, Ambassador Gilad Erdan marched up and down the aisle holding up a picture of the Iranian woman whose brutal murder by Iran’s morality police sparked the wave of protests throughout the country last year.
Ambassador Erdan then led the Israeli delegation out of the General Assembly Hall.
Erdan said in a statement to Fox News Digital that the presence of a “vile murderer” like President Raisi marked a “new moral low” for the United Nations. He noted that as the international community showed respect for “the butcher of Tehran” by allowing him to speak at the UN, “hundreds of Iranians” were outside, demanding that the international community “wake up and help them.”
While the reasons for his brief detention are unclear and he was released, Ambassador Erdan told Fox News that it was “utterly disgraceful” that he would be detained for “standing with the Iranian people” and protesting against Raisi being given “an audience on the global stage.”
Erdan described his detention as another example of the UN’s “strong bias” against Israel.
The ambassador noted that in the past, other UN ambassadors have held up signs “for ideological reasons” without facing repercussions and said his detention will not deter him from standing up “for what is right and just.”
During his speech before the General Assembly, President Raisi decried the “Cold War mentality” of some nations that poses a “threat to the security and prosperity of nations.”
Raisi called out what he described as “a new East-West divide” and said Iran is committed to ensuring that it “should not be permitted to take shape.”
