Iran's statement at a UN Security Council meeting on Venezuela

Here is an excerpt of the remarks by Amir Saeid Iravani, Iran's Permanent Representative to the United Nations, at the UN Security Council emergency meeting on Venezuela in New York on Monday:

First, the Islamic Republic of Iran condemns in the strongest possible terms the military attack carried out by the United States of America against the Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela. This illegal act constitutes state terrorism, a manifest violation of the Charter of the United Nations — particularly Article 2, paragraphs 4 and 7 — and peremptory norms of international law, and amounts to an internationally wrongful act and a full-fledged act of aggression.

Such military aggression against an independent member state of the United Nations establishes a serious breach of regional and international peace and security with far-reaching consequences for the international system as a whole.

Second, the abduction of the democratically elected president and the first lady of the Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela by the United States constitutes a flagrant violation of customary international law, including the principles of the inviolability of the immunities accorded to heads of state and government under international law, and represents a grave assault on the sovereign equality of states. Third, the United States is openly seeking to substitute its domestic law for international law and the Charter of the United Nations. This represents a serious warning to the international community and to all member states. Such unlawful conduct strikes at the very foundations of the Charter-based international legal order and establishes a dangerous precedent that must be categorically and unequivocally rejected.

The so-called declared US policy of "peace through strength" prescribes the law of the jungle and the rule of force instead of the rule of law, and if tolerated and normalized, would render the collective security system established by the Charter ineffective and devoid of purpose.