An Israeli official appears to have gotten a little ahead of himself with an unprecedented sideswipe at a longstanding critic of the Middle Eastern country’s conduct amid the ongoing conflict.
“Today, I have declared UN Secretary-General [António Guterres] persona non grata in Israel and banned him from entering the country,” Israel’s Foreign Minister Israel Katz announced in a statement posted to X on Wednesday.
He added that the decision had been made for Guterres’ failure to “unequivocally condemn” Iran’s recent aerial bombardment of Israel, as well as the senior UN official being “yet to denounce the massacre and sexual atrocities committed by Hamas murderers on October 7.”
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Katz’s claim was quickly fact-checked, however, by Israeli journalist Yanir Cozin, who posted that sources in the relevant authorities had confirmed Guterres was still able to enter Israel using his non-diplomatic passport, and therefore that “the announcement by the Ministry of Foreign Affairs about him has no meaning.”
The apparent gaffe comes amid the most significant escalation in tensions across the Middle East since the outbreak of war in Gaza last October, as Israel continues to press on with its invasion of Southern Lebanon after Iran launched roughly 180 ballistic missiles at Israeli targets on Tuesday night.
U.S. Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin confirmed Wednesday morning that U.S. destroyers deployed in the Mediterranean had assisted Israel’s Iron Dome defense system in repelling the Iranian barrage.
There’s little confirmation so far on the extent of damage caused by that attack—with Iran claiming 90 percent of rockets hit their targets and Israel maintaining the vast majority were intercepted mid-flight—though Palestinian authorities in the West Bank have reported at least one death due to falling debris and fires as the result of successful strikes.
The Biden administration has further pledged its support for Israel’s ground incursion into Lebanon, which has in turn triggered even greater displacement in a country where an estimated one million people have already fled their homes following a series of Israeli airstrikes that all but wiped out the senior leadership of Hezbollah, an Iranian proxy, over the course of the past week.
Israel has now vowed retaliation for Iran’s aerial assault on Tuesday, with Netanyahu describing it as a “big mistake” the Iranian regime will soon “pay for.” Iran’s President Masoud Pezeshkian meanwhile has hailed the bombardment as a decisive response to the aggression of the Zionist regime,” adding that “Iran is not a belligerent, but it stands firmly against any threat” to itself or its proxies.
This fierce rhetorical exchange has fueled already widespread fears the Iranian barrage may well have just pushed the already rapidly deepening crisis in the Middle East past the point of no return, having heaped sand into the gears of diplomatic efforts, announced by the U.S. and France just last week, to broker a 21-day stay of hostilities between Iran and Israel.
