Transcription
What is wrong with the security council that it cannot resolve these issues? Why are these issues still on the agenda? And the answer to that question has come in the summit of the international of the leaders of the United of the members of this United Nations during the summit meetings where they have consistently said that we need to reform the way the UN security council is working and the the the membership of the UN security council. Uh till uh the crisis uh in in Ukraine and Gaza the focus was on Africa and the biggest uh gap in the UN security council is the membership where there's no permanent member from Africa.
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Hello and welcome to Stra News Global. For the gist. This is Naanima Basu. [music] I have with me today a very special guest. He is ambassador Ashok Mukharji. He was India's ambassador, permanent representative to the United Nations in New York. And we are going to understand from him what really has happened with the US Iran Israel war because he was there at the UN when the joint plan of action or the Iran nuclear deal was getting stitched up in 2015 and rest is history. Welcome to Strains Global sir and thank you so much for your time.
Thank you for having me. Um so so to firstly understand from you the disturbances the kind of intense war that we are really seeing now that is going on between US Israel and Iran. It all started with the again with the nuclear negotiations, right? And that was this time it was Oman that was playing the role of a mediator between US and Iran and we were seeing that some kind of progress was being made. [snorts] But all this really started with the JCPOA and you were there in the thick of things at that point of time. The joint action uh plan of action which is called the Iran nuclear deal. What really happened at that point of time and then we know how US walked out of it and you know rest is all history and today we are seeing whatever it is so if you can give us some background on that.
Well, the background goes back to the concerns on uh the nature of Iran's nuclear uh program and uh specifically the focus on how much uh Iran was enriching its nuclear uh stockpile. And uh the JCPOA was uh a negotiation between Iran, uh the EU and the permanent members of the security council uh because as you know the EU is not a member of the UN. So uh the result of that negotiation uh which was agreed to by all the participants was that there would be a gap on the enrichment of uh uranium uh and that the international atomic energy agency would be monitoring the obligation of Iran. Uh in return, uh Iran would have uh relief from the sanctions imposed by the United Nations Security Council uh on it. Uh so this was sequenced over a 10-year period and uh the key role was to be played by the International Atomic Energy Agency as the monitoring and reporting body. But uh the situation uh took a unexpected turn when President Trump in his first uh term uh walked out of this agreement and uh and created the conditions for the unraveling of the obligations of all the parties. Uh it's important to mention this because uh the United Nations Security Council endorsed the negotiated outcome of the JCPOA. So the negotiated outcome or the JCPOA was the internationally international legal uh framework because under article 25 of the UN charter decisions you taken by the security council are binding on all uh members of the United Nations and they have the effect of international law. So this uh dimension and this uh this aspect of how one party could break uh an international legal uh agreement I think uh was raised at that time when uh President Trump in the first term walked out of the JCPOA and today we are seeing the consequence of what happens when uh international legal structure breaks down and is replaced by uh each country wanting to do what it wants to do without being constrained by its obligations under international law.
Mhm. Well, that's a very valid point that you've talked about uh sir is the fact that you know we are seeing today what is the result when you break an international law but then again when uh President Trump in its uh you know first tenure when he walked out of the JCPOA why is it do you think the UN could not bring the US back and that's also the question I'll come to that later on the you know the validity of the UN today of whatever is going on and you can only give a clearer picture because it looks very complicated all the UN processes but then just coming to the fact that JCPOA was legally binding as you are saying then how is it that the US could walk out of it from such an important deal uh and Iran had been constantly talking about uh you know asking the US to come back.
Yes, so what happened after the United States walked out is that the security council did not endorse the United States walking out. Uh there were members like Russia and China uh who openly said that this was not uh uh in keeping with the obligations of the United States under the UN charter uh to a decision that the United States had been a party to. Uh the other two permanent members France and UK did not uh openly oppose what the United States did but they did not unravel the agreement. They did not resile from their obligations as permanent members to the JCPOA. So you had a situation where one permanent member the United States had walked out but the other four were in the room and the International Atomic Energy Agency kept its mandate to monitor the situation. I think that's important because people seem to assume that the United Nations was uh absent but the United Nations having given the mandate to the international atomic energy agency was present in in in this issue. The issue itself got uh what got uh got if I may say fractured because new areas were added on to the concerns about Iran and in the initial phase that was Iran's ballistic missile program. Now if that ballistic missile program was not negotiated in the JCPOA which was only limited to enrichment of uranium then it is surely also uh account the permanent members and the EU which negotiated it are to be accountable for why they did not get agreement on including the ballistic missile program. So you know this is the give and take of negotiations but when the end result is endorsed that is the final uh framework and so adding concerns on Iran Iran's ballistic missiles was not within the framework of the JCPOA but that in the second Trump administration became the driving force for putting more pressure on Iran. Uh and as you said uh negotiations or mediation uh was introduced through Oman between the United States and Iran and uh the accounts of this mediation of course are not public but uh the interview given by the mediator the foreign minister of Oman to the American face the nation channel program uh indicated that uh actually the mediation had succeeded in uh getting major concession from Iran on uh the issue of uh the use of uh nuclear material by Iran that Iran would not make a nuclear bomb. That is what he said in in the interview. So in that background the resort to uh armed force to attack Iran is I think not uh sustainable.
Mhm. Uh but then that's also one thing that you talked about sir is the fact that the issue really was with Iran's ballistic missiles program, right? And maybe that is the reason why all that is happening. If you can elaborate on that and the fact that why do you think Oman got so interested on this?
Well, I think the the ballistic missile issue is a issue of disarmament. It is an issue which has been discussed in a broader context. My point was that uh it did not feature in the joint uh program which was endorsed by the security council. So therefore it was not within the international legal framework the the JCPOA. Uh as far as Oman uh playing a role in uh mediating uh uh compromise is concerned. I think it's important to keep in mind that Oman in Asia is u is well known for mediating especially between Iran and and other countries because uh Oman brings to the table a track record of uh of being a reliable uh mediator. It's trusted by both Iran and by the countries which are unable to talk directly to Iran but are willing to uh go through a mediation process to find some uh solution to to their problem. Now uh in any uh mediation trust is the most important uh uh uh criteria because if there is no trust in the mediation process then the entire process becomes meaningless. I think this was uh illustrated last year in June when during negotiations between Iran and its and and these countries which did not talk directly to Iran while the negotiation negotiators were meeting the 12-day uh bombardment of Iran took place in June 2025. That now has been repeated again because if you go by the account given by the foreign minister of Oman in public, he had achieved a breakthrough. Iran had agreed to not enrich uranium or not to make a nuclear bomb as he said or a nuclear weapon and the technical uh aspect was to have been finalized at a meeting in Vienna. Uh but before the meeting in Vienna took place the bombing of Iran happened. So it has left the mediator uh which is Oman in a very difficult situation.
Sir and also coming to the role that the UN plays now you were also there at the UN uh when the Afghan war was at its peak and of course the conversation was at that time uh how to withdraw the forces and that's when really it it all began. But after that we also saw all this kind of you know limited wars happening. uh Russia, Ukraine which is going on of course and then Israel, Gaza and the fact that now today we have this Iran war going on and and you know you never know everything turns into a war of attrition these days. So where do you see the UN role is lacking because that is coming under question again and again.
Well, I think uh ever since uh the first uh in the past 10 years, if you take it in this short period, the role of the UN which is uh outsourced in the charter to the security council. So it's not the entire UN but the security council uh has uh been ineffective as you mentioned the conflicts starting from the Ukraine issue in 2014 uh then going on into the other problem in Afghanistan. Then you had the situation in Yemen. You had the breakdown in in Sudan, a huge problem in Sudan which continues till today. Uh and the ineffectiveness of the UN security council to resolve the issues on its agenda. A lot of people are surprised when they hear that the UN Security Council has more than 50 issues of conflicts on its agenda and the question therefore legitimately being asked is that what is wrong with the security council that it cannot resolve these issues? Why are these issues still on the agenda? And the answer to that question has come in the summit of the international of the leaders of the United of the members of this United Nations during the summit meetings where they have consistently said that we need to reform the way the UN security council is working and the the the membership of the UN security council. Uh till uh the crisis uh in in Ukraine and Gaza. The focus was on Africa and the biggest uh gap in the UN security council is the membership where there's no permanent member from Africa. So the council was taking decisions on African issues of which there are several on its agenda without the participation on an equal basis by any African permanent member and that galvanized the process for reforming and and and and the security council and calling for reformed multilateralism which is what India has also been calling for. But uh when you look at the situation in Iran, in Gaza or in Ukraine or in Yemen, all these are on the agenda of the security council and the question has to be asked as to why the United Nations Security Council is unable to even enforce decisions that it took. Now in the case of Ukraine, it took a decision unanimously in February 2015 when I was there in the United Nations at that time as India's ambassador and the agreement was to achieve the political settlement agreed to in the resolution which was called the Minsk agreements. Now those mince agreements didn't get implemented and yet today no one is holding the countries the five permanent members of the security council and the guaranter countries of the mince agreement accountable as to why were they not fulfilling their obligations as permanent members of the security council and as uh guaranters of of that agreement. A similar question is asked on the Israel Palestine issue where existing security council resolutions are not implemented and and in the case of the Iran nuclear deal the JCPOA even there the same question arises that what is it that leads the security council not to enforce its own decisions because in the charter the security council is the only body in the UN which has been given two specific levers to enforce its decisions. Article 41 which allows the security council to impose economic sanctions and article 42 which allows the United Nations Security Council to authorize the use of armed force. So in the cases where we are seeing why is the security council not being able to use these two levers that shows that there's a problem within the council and unless that problem is sorted out I think the impression that you mentioned of the UN being helpless will be amplified.
Mhm. Uh but then also sir we see all this kind of resolutions coming up by individual countries and that's when you know uh we've been seeing India either abstaining or you know not voting against but then the question that arises in the vote of explanation that comes as a followup is that this particular country raised this issue and we are not adhering to that particular provision. Why is it not we uh we see that you know uh let's say okay not individual country maybe that is the process but how do you really make this resolutions and voting process so to say sacrosanct I mean for a common man this is very difficult to understand because then what is the validity of doing this kind of voting and resolutions again and again.
Yeah, I think this is a very valid question and there are two answers to that question. The first one lies in the way the security council and the five permanent members deliberately decided to uh to uh to not share the power with the general assembly of the United Nations. They said that they were going to operate on the basis of what they called great power responsibility and take collective action to uphold peace and security. But that was in 1945 and today in the last 80 years we have seen that the principle of great power responsibility of cooperation between the five permanent members has completely disappeared. So this is one problem. The problem that they themselves are not able to do something but they will not allow the general assembly to do anything. And the second part is in the charter article 10 of the uh and 12 of the of the charter make it very clear that the general assembly can pass a resolution but it has no legal implication because it's a recommendation. It's recommendatory, it's not binding unlike the security council decisions. So unless we reform and the the provision of the UN charter to give uh authority to the general assembly, we will continue facing what you have mentioned that there will be resolutions, there'll be countries voting, some will abstain, some will uh even disappear from the room. I mean I I was quite surprised recently to find that even India was missing from an amendment moved by the United States uh in the general assembly. So countries can even be missing from the rule. But that is absurd because if you are a fully paid up responsible member of an organization, you cannot abdicate your responsibility by being missing from the room. So this is something that uh needs to be looked at and I have consistently said that the time to look at it is has passed. Actually our prime minister called for the reform in 2020. We already in 2026 and no one wants to take that step to convene the platform to reform the UN and that step is in the in the charter of the UN article 109 which clearly says that you need 97 countries in the general assembly and any seven countries in the uh security council which has 15 members to vote to convene a conference to review and amend the charter. Now that's the first step. But if countries 97 countries can't get together to to to uh to uh to take this uh step then probably the question that is in the mind of ordinary people that you referred to that the UN is completely uh irrelevant makes a lot of sense. So I think that that's what needs to be done and countries that have invested in in in the UN must take the lead.
Mhm. Uh sir also yes you you raised a very valid point and of course that is obvious that the the P5 themselves they are not a coherent group anymore. Uh but then the question also rises is the fact that uh when countries like you know what we are seeing the US is doing going inside a country bombing and then triggering a regime change. When you do this kind of a thing again and again when they did it for Venezuela now they're trying for Iran and of course one does not know what President Trump is planning further ahead people talk about Cuba as well reports are coming in why is it the UN uh you know silent in these kind of matters apart from just issuing sorry to say you know some kind of anodine statements that come comes out from the secretary general's office is there no legal provision to tell a country that you cannot really go in and invade so to say and and trigger a regime change no matter uh whether you like that country leadership or not.
Well, there is a a provision. In fact, that's the job of which the security council is supposed to do. But because of the working methods of the security council, the veto that is held by these five countries, uh the veto has actually been used more often than it was even conceptualized at in 1945. The veto was looked at and and and projected as a as a temporary safeguard mechanism. That is what the Indian delegate in in 1945 called it. It was a temporary safeguard mechanism. Today it has become a default setting especially by the by the three countries which use the veto most often which are the United States, Russia and uh to an extent China. The the the UK and France have not used the veto since 1989. So uh in the council when the time comes to say as you have pointed out that you cannot change a regime by force or you have to go through the UN system the the UN charter to to do what you want to do uh then countries which are powerful uh like uh the United States in in the examples you've given uh like Russia uh and even China they take uh steps which are unilateral rather than multilateral and uh and and impose their uh priorities and their agendas uh through the unilateral method. Now the problem arises when they come back to the security council. I mean this has happened in two cases already. In the case of Haiti uh which is in the in the Latin American region uh the UN uh was unable even after deploying its peacekeeping through the security council to contain the conflicts within Haiti which are internal conflicts in Haiti and the United States then uh came up under Mr. Trump's uh in early in his second term to uh propose that there would be a privatization in a sense the security council would not uh directly be uh responsible for monitoring the resolution of the crisis in Haiti but that this would be outsourced to some other members of the United Nations to be chosen by the United States and that the actual on the ground operation would be uh conducted by what was called a gang suppression force. So it was not even a UN peacekeeping operation. Now what I find disturbing is that this entire idea and proposal was endorsed by the security council with two abstentions that of China and Russia. A similar u template has been applied to Gaza where you have now a board of peace which uh has been endorsed without any clarity on uh of the in the security council. But uh when you see the charter of the board of peace, it is completely contradictory to the UN charter because the UN charter places obligations on member states. The board of peace places obligations on nobody and it has in fact centralized uh any decisions in one person not even uh you know a state. So I think that uh the UN security council therefore has in the last year and a half made the case for urgent reform even more urgent because unless countries uh stand up and demand this reform this uh trend will continue with unexpected consequences.
Mhm. Um it's good that you uh raised the issue of board of peace and I was coming to that itself that is it because I mean we've seen in the board of peace people are joining I mean countries are joining is it because they have lost faith in the UN and the expansion of the UNC which also I'll ask you that why is it not happening uh but then again uh do you see a board of peace is the kind of future even if they have to kind of pay in um to go into those kind of uh you know groupings I would say I don't know how effective that will be because it is a Trump which is running it and a Trump which is doing all this regime change operations but but countries are joining the board of peace is it because they are fed up of the UN.
No, I think the countries who are joining the peace have uh well from what one reads they have two uh motivations. One and the broader motivation was of the countries in the region and they met as the most of them are Arab countries. So they met within the Arab League and then they expanded it to the organization of Islamic countries. So that was the larger grouping which is recognized by the UN as a as a as a as a grouping. So it was a combination of the Arab League and the Organization of Islamic Countries who provided the the ground uh level uh support for having a regional solution to the problem in Gaza. And that was the reason why a lot of other members of the United Nations Security Council probably went along with uh a regional approach. We have seen this uh applied to uh uh the European conflicts where European uh countries get together as a group and provide the leadership or in Africa where African Union countries get together and provide leadership and and that that mission is therefore integrated with the security council mission. But there are some countries which are not part of the regional uh groupings who also wanted uh to join in. And I think that these countries have their own individual uh self-interest involved uh in who have nothing to do with Gaza who have never shown an interest in the Palestinian Israeli issue but who are now in the border of peace. So these countries are slightly different. But the point to make with whether it's the board of peace through the regional organizations or the board of peace with these individual uh countries uh is that uh this is not something that is foreseen in the UN charter. The charter does not allow the security council to outsource uh structures for maintaining peace and security and that discussion has to take place within the charter and that's why I go back to article 109 that if the board of peace is to be made a part of the UN uh structure then it has to be discussed among all 193 countries of the United Nations in a general conference in a legal setting because people forget that it's not the G20 or the BRICS this United Nations United Nations is a treaty based organization. It's a legal organization. Whereas G20 and BRICS are informal groups. I mean they don't have treaty. So therefore if you are going to tinker around with the way the UN security council is to operate then you have to make it part of the charter of the United Nations and get the approval of twothirds of the members of the United Nations to agree to it. That has not happened. And my concern is that the longer we postpone the the process to review the UN charter, the more such issues will uh come up and and derail the entire treaty and that will have consequences which even the you know the strongest members of the United Nations may not be able to foresee because when you derail a treaty based framework then you replace then you are left with a vacuum or the rule of the jungle. Might is right. And while today one country may feel that it has all the might and therefore it is always right. But that need not always be the case because there are new things that have happened in the world including new technologies. So which undermine uh the the the the the strength of countries.
Mhm. U so but then when you talk about new technologies what is it that you're exactly talking about and the fact that do you think after this Iran war and I'm I'm not saying after I mean it no one knows when this is going to end but now it is it is really intensifying and we are seeing all these bunch of countries at one side you know taking on Iran. [snorts] do you think that this is high time now that the UNC expands even if they do it will take probably years now even if they agree now but how do you see all this panning out visav the Iran war.
Well, I think that uh if you look at it in terms of what is currently the structure of the security council in terms of maintaining peace and security you have three countries which are from the European group the United States France and UK they are permanent members and you have China from the Asia-Pacific uh group and uh the and you have Russia uh which represents the Eastern European group. Now uh in if you look at the the structure of of of the UN in terms of its regions uh there is nobody from the African group which has 54 countries. There is nobody as a permanent member. There's nobody as a permanent member from the Latin American group which has 33 countries and the Asia-Pacific group also has 54 countries but it has only one uh representative which is China whereas the European group has three. So you have to start with this anomaly because you cannot have a situation which was there in 1945 that those powers who were victorious in the second world war continue 80 years later to exercise the same uh responsibilities without meeting the obligations because that's where we are right now with the breakdown of peace and security means that the obligations of these countries which have taken the veto power to themselves are not being met by them. I mean how can countries which have the veto power be at the forefront of uh of waging war? The obligation is for those countries to wage peace but there is a there is a complete yeah there is no diplomacy has to prioritize peace but the diplomacy that we are seeing is prioritizing war and it's not only in the case of Iran but in the case of in Ukraine in the case of the Gaza situation in in Africa in Sudan there is no voice coming out from these five permanent members or leadership for peace and and I think that that is uh something that needs to be focused on and now that the UN is going to uh elect its next secretary general in December this year, we need to also look at the kind of person who will be the executive officer of the UN, the ch the secretary general who has powers under article 99 to convene meetings to you know I think a lot of people would do well to look at the 1950s when there was a secretary general who uh used the provisions of the charter to to try and broke a peace. Dag Hammarskjöld. Dag Hammarskjöld was one of the examples of a active uh voice for peace and for reconciliation and and so on. And he was killed while trying to bring peace in the Congo. But that is the kind of person that the UN must select. Now they should not go by a bureaucratic process of saying that you know we have a certain fixed rotation criteria or a gender criteria and find somebody. They have to find somebody who has a track record of being a an activist for peace and make that person the secretary general.
Um so thank you for all that. My last question to you will be again of course to understand because right now that is what the you know the news is all about and it is getting uh quite concerning is the fact that how the Iran war is panning out. Do you think this is probably the time we saw the UN security council having an emergency meeting but that really came up with nothing and now we see France, Germany as you said you know US all coming up together. What do you think because when you were in the UN there were limited wars happening at that time also uh where do you see this do you see any resolution coming up very soon or do you think this is also going to now stretch for a long time to come?
You know, when permanent members are at the forefront of waging war instead of waging peace, then the security council is not the place to look for any solution to these problems because apart from whatever weight they may have in international affairs, they also hold the lever of the veto which they extracted from the negotiations on the on the promise of working together as I said on the principle of great power responsibility. So if they are at the forefront of waging war then the first step should be to divest them of these powers and for that we need again to to to amend the charter. But uh the the the flip side of this is that the UN is not a creation only of these five countries. A country like India has given blood and money for the creation of the United Nations. So it is we are a stakeholder whose voice has to be heard and has to be uh has to guide the UN much more than the voice of uh countries which for some reason have decided that waging war is the solution to the world's problems. It is not.
Mhm. Well, thank you so much sir. That's very very helpful that waging war is not uh the solution and the fact that you know all these UNC countries cannot be I mean who are part of the UN security council at the forefront. Thank you so much for talking to us and thank you for your time.
Thank you. Thank you.
So that was Ambassador Ashok Mukharji. He was India's ambassador to the United Nations in New York telling us the processes that the UN can follow in a situation like this. However, as he has described the fact that you know when the UNC countries are at the forefront, it becomes difficult for a situation what is unfolding in Iran to bring under control. Thank you for watching this interaction on the J. This is Naim Basu. [music]