The UN General Assembly (UNGA) convened Thursday in a veto debate session on a draft Security Council resolution on the closure of the Strait of Hormuz, with member states divided about whether the text would have eased or deepened the crisis.
UNGA President Annalena Baerbock opened the session by urging members to move beyond the Council's deadlock.
"In light of the Council's failure to support efforts leading to safe and unimpeded passage in the Strait of Hormuz, the General Assembly now has both the opportunity and the responsibility to ensure that the debate on the freedom of navigation in the Strait of Hormuz does not end with the casting of a veto," she said.
Warning that the crisis was not isolated, she said, "What we are witnessing is not a single crisis, but the convergence of multiple overlapping and long-standing fault lines, which did not start on the 28th of February," she said, pointing to tensions about Iran's nuclear capabilities and Israeli military attacks in the region.
Russia's Deputy UN envoy Anna Evstigneeva defended Moscow's veto, arguing the draft would have been exploited to justify further military action.
"It proposed that the Security Council give a green light to the use of certain protective measures under the pretext of ensuring the safety of navigation," she said, adding that it "would have become a carte blanche for the continuation of aggressive actions and further escalation."
She said Russia and China had put forward an alternative, balanced draft resolution to facilitate a negotiated solution.
China's UN envoy Fu Cong echoed that position, warning that the Council's actions "must not provide a veneer of legitimacy for unauthorized mandatory operations or grant a license to the use of force."
US envoy Mike Waltz sharply criticized the vetoes, accusing Moscow and Beijing of choosing "to shield the world's leading state sponsor of terrorism."
He vowed that Washington would "continue to work so that food aid, fertilizer, energy, and commercial goods can flow, once again, through this vital waterway free from attack, threats, mining, or extortion."
Stavros Lambrinidis, the head of the delegation of the EU to the UN, warned of severe global consequences, noting fertilizer prices had risen 20% to 35% in Latin America and the Caribbean, while global urea prices were up 50%, potentially driving 45 million additional people into acute hunger, a disruption he compared to Russia's naval blockade of the Black Sea.
