Iran was elected to a top post on the UN Arms Trade Treaty conference, UN Watch revealed Sunday in an exclusive report.
The Islamic Republic was chosen for the conference, which is currently taking place in New York, as the international community continues to sanction the regime in an attempt to curtail its nuclear program and as the UN Security Council denounced Tehran’s illegal arms deals, including shipments to Syria.
The United Nations Conference on the Arms Trade Treaty, which opened last week and runs until July 27, promises to deliver a new agreement to regulate the transfer of arms.
“Right after a UN Security Council report found Iran guilty of illegally transferring guns and bombs to Syria, which is now murdering thousands of its own people, it defies logic, morality and common sense for the UN to now elect this same regime to a global post in the regulation of arms transfers,” said Hillel Neuer, executive director of UN Watch.
"This is like choosing Bernie Madoff to police fraud on the stock market. And the U.N.'s scandalous choice of Iran is exactly why we fear that Syria's declared bid for a U.N. Human Rights Council seat is not impossible," he stated.
UN Watch called on UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon to condemn the decision to give Iran a position of responsibility in regulating the arms trade.
"He should remind the conference that the Security Council has imposed four rounds of sanctions on Iran for refusing to halt its probited nuclear program, and that Iran continues to defy the international community through illegal arms shipments to the murderous Assad regime," said Neuer.
"Syria continues to be the central party to illicit Iranian arms transfers," the Security Council report recently found, citing the discovery of Iranian shipments to Damascus of assault rifles, machineguns, explosives, detonators, 60mm and 120mm mortal shells and other items.
Neuer expressed concern that the UN's election of Iran "injects ambiguity about the U.N.'s position on illicit Iranian arms transfers, fuels Iranian propaganda, and grants international legitimacy to a regime that tortures student activists, hangs gays and subjugates women."
Iran is already boasting about the UN election in its state-controlled media.
IRNA ran the report and announced that Iran was elected "as deputy for the talks to regulate global arms trade treaty. Some 193 participating countries unanimously voted in favor of Iran during the 4th day of the meeting." In addition, The Tehran Times declared that Iran "is assisting the president of the Arms Trade Treaty Conference in the general conduct of the business of the conference."