UN diplomat resigns over claims of planned nuclear strike on Iran

A diplomat at the United Nations resigned from his post on Friday and accused the international body of preparing for a scenario involving the possible use of nuclear weapons on Iran.

Mohamad Safa, a UN representative for the Patriotic Vision Association (PVA), a non-governmental organisation that holds special consultative status with the UN Economic and Social Council (Ecosoc), said that he resigned from his role in order to "leak the information", before claiming that some senior figures at the UN had been "serving a powerful lobby" and not the UN itself.

"This is a picture of Tehran. For you uneducated, untraveled, never-served, warhawks licking your chops at the thought of bombing it. It's not some low population desert," he wrote in a social media post accompanied by a photo of the Iranian capital. 

"There are families, children, family pets. Regular working class people with dreams. You're sick to want war. Tehran is a city of nearly 10,000,000 people. Imagine nuking Washington, Berlin, Paris, London, or beyond, bombed with nuclear weapons," he said.

"I don't think people understand the gravity of the situation as the UN is preparing for possible nuclear weapon use in Iran… I gave up my diplomatic career to leak this information. I suspended my duties so as not to be part of or a witness to this crime against humanity," he added.

According to the UN Environment Programme Champions of the Earth, Safa had been executive director of the PVA since 2013 and was nominated as its permanent representative to the UN in 2016.

His comments came days after officials at the World Health Organization (WHO) said they were preparing for a "worst-case scenario" of nuclear catastrophe if the US and Israeli war on Iran escalated.

'The worst-case scenario is a nuclear incident… and that's something that worries us the most'

– Hanan Balkhy, WHO regional director

WHO regional director Hanan Balkhy told Politico that "the worst-case scenario is a nuclear incident… and that's something that worries us the most".

She stressed that such an event would have consequences lasting decades, affecting not just the region but the international community. 

WHO staff, she noted, are preparing for nuclear scenarios "in its broader sense", including both attacks on nuclear facilities and the use of nuclear weapons themselves.

Last week, the Nobel laureate and former director general of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), Mohamed ElBaradei, also warned against the potential use of nuclear weapons in the ongoing conflict.

When asked about whether nuclear weapons could be used against Iran, ElBaradei told Middle East Eye: "Should I one hundred percent exclude it? No. Do I pray every night that it doesn't? Yes.

"If you have a crazy leader and they feel that they are losing, I don't exclude it," he added.

In recent days, several Iranian politicians have advocated for Tehran to exit the Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons (NPT), after the US and Israel ramped up their attacks and struck civilian nuclear sites.

It would be meaningless for Iran to remain a signatory to the international treaty as it "has had no benefit for us", Ebrahim Rezaei, the spokesman for the national security commission of parliament, said on Friday.

Iran has been a party to the NPT since 1970 and is legally bound, as a non-nuclear-weapon state, not to acquire nuclear weapons.

Its nuclear programme is therefore assessed within a treaty framework that imposes specific legal obligations and international verification requirements.

In contrast, Israel is not a party to the NPT. As a result, it cannot legally be bound by obligations arising from that treaty.

Carolina Pedrazzi contributed to this report.