UN Secretary General Antonio Guterres urged renewed diplomacy between Iran and the US on Thursday, warning that the world is at risk of another destabilising conflict in the Middle East.
“We believe that it’s important that there is a dialogue allowing for an agreement in relation … to the nuclear question, and that we can avoid a crisis that could have devastating consequences in the region,” Mr Guterres told reporters at UN headquarters in New York.
Washington and Tehran have been trading increasingly sharp warnings, with US President Donald Trump indicating that military options remain on the table if negotiations over Iran’s nuclear programme fail.
Mr Guterres said global challenges can no longer be managed by a single dominant power or by rival blocs dividing the world into competing spheres of influence. Instead, he called for a faster transition towards a multipolar international order.
“If we want peace to be sustained and development to be generalised, we need to support multipolarity and a network of relations among different countries,” he said.
Asked about Mr Trump’s claim that he had ended eight wars and whether he was concerned about the future role of the world body in maintaining international peace and security, Mr Guterres defended the organisation’s relevance while acknowledging its limits.
“There are areas where we are not mediators because at least one of the parties does not want us to mediate,” he said.
Mr Guterres spoke of Russia’s war in Ukraine and the Israel-Hamas conflict as examples in which the UN has been sidelined.
“Russia never wanted us to be mediator in the conflict,” he said. “It was the case of Israel with the Palestinians. Israel never accepted the UN to be a mediator, probably because we would mediate based on our values, the values of the Charter.”
Mr Guterres said the UN lacks enough power to compel states and leaders to comply with international law, which is a central obstacle to resolving conflicts worldwide.
The organisation’s credibility is further weakened, he added, when permanent members of the Security Council breach international norms.
Mr Guterres’s second term as UN Secretary General has included geopolitical shocks such as Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine, the Taliban’s return to power in Afghanistan, wars in Sudan and Gaza, the end of Syria’s long-running civil conflict, Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro's capture by the US, and a 12-day Israeli war with Iran.
At the same time, the UN has been undergoing sweeping internal reforms after deep cuts in humanitarian and development aid budgets by the US and European governments, forcing the world body to scale back operations even as global crises increase.
