Russia and China on Tuesday vetoed a U.N. Security Council resolution aimed at reopening the Strait of Hormuz that had been repeatedly watered down in hopes those two countries would abstain.
The vote — 11-2, with two abstentions from Pakistan and Colombia— took place just hours after U.S. President Donald Trump issued an unprecedented threat that a “whole civilization will die tonight" if Iran does not open the strategic waterway and make a deal before his 8 p.m. Eastern deadline. One-fifth of the world’s oil typically passes through the strait, and Iran’s stranglehold during the war has sent energy prices soaring.
Russia and China strongly defended their opposition, both directly citing Trump’s most recent and perilous threat yet to end Iran’s civilization as confirmation that the proposal would have given U.S. and Israel “carte blanche for continued aggression," as Russian envoy Vassily Nebenzia put it.
Nebenzia and China’s U.N. ambassador, Fu Cong, said the most recent text failed to capture the root causes and full picture of the conflict by showing that America and its closest ally started the now spiraling war.
“Such language is highly susceptible to misinterpretation or even abuse,” Cong said in his statement.
He added, “The draft resolution, should it have been adopted, would send a wrong message and have serious, very serious consequences.” Cong said the war is likely to escalate, with the United States now “openly threatening the very survival of a civilization.”
,The foreign minister of Bahrain, which authored the draft, assailed the U.N.'s most powerful body for not taking action and allowing the international community to be “held hostage to economic blackmail" from Iran.
“Failing to adopt this resolution sends the wrong signal to the world, to the people of the world,” Abdullatif bin Rashid Al Zayani said after the vote — “the signal that the threat to international waterways can pass without any decisive action by the international organization responsible for the maintenance of international peace and security.”
But Iran’s ambassador to the U.N. thanked its allies on the 15-member council for refusing to adopt the resolution.
“The text unjustifiably and misleadingly portrays Iran’s lawful measures in the Strait of Hormuz, which have been taken in the exercise of its inherent right of self-defense in accordance with the UN Charter, as threats to international peace and security,” Amir-Saeid Iravani said in his statement.
It’s doubtful the resolution, even if it had been adopted, would have impacted the war, now in its sixth week, because it was been significantly weakened to try to get Moscow and Beijing to abstain rather than veto it.
The initial Gulf proposal would have authorized countries to use “all necessary means” — U.N. wording that would include military action — to ensure transit through the Strait of Hormuz and deter attempts to close it.
The United States, which had supported the draft from its original form, assailed the countries that objected to the resolution.
“No one should tolerate that they are holding the global economy at gunpoint," Mike Waltz, the U.S. ambassador to the U.N., said of Iran, “but today, Russia and China did tolerate it.” He said in his statement: “They sided with a regime that seeks to intimidate the Gulf into submission, even as it brutalizes its own people during a national internet blackout, for daring to imagine dignity or freedom.”
After Russia, China and France, all veto-wielding countries on the 15-member Security Council, expressed opposition to approving the use of force, the resolution was revised to eliminate all references to offensive action. It would have authorized only “all defensive means necessary.” A vote had been expected on Saturday.
But instead the resolution was further weakened to eliminate any reference to Security Council authorization — which is an order for action — and limit its provisions to the Strait of Hormuz. Previous drafts had included adjacent waters.
The resolution vetoed Tuesday "strongly encourages states interested in the use of commercial maritime routes in the Strait of Hormuz to coordinate efforts, defensive in nature, commensurate with the circumstances, to contribute to ensuring the safety and security of navigation across the Strait of Hormuz.”
This should include escorting merchant and commercial vessels, and deterring attempts to close, obstruct or interfere with international navigation through the strait, it says.
The resolution also demanded that Iran immediately halt attacks on merchant and commercial vessels and stop impeding their freedom of navigation through the Strait of Hormuz and attacking civilian infrastructure.
In response to the U.S. and Israeli attacks beginning on Feb. 28, Iran has targeted hotels, airports, residential buildings and other civilian infrastructure in more than 10 countries, including the Islamic Republic's Gulf neighbors, some of the world’s major exporters of oil and natural gas.
Iran's blockade in the strait is seen by Gulf nations as an existential threat. Bahrain, a Gulf nation that hosts the U.S. Fifth Fleet and is the Security Council’s Arab representative and its president this month, has been pressing for U.N. action.
In response to Iran’s strikes against its Gulf neighbors, the Security Council adopted a Bahrain-sponsored resolution on March 11 condemning the “egregious attacks” and calling for Tehran to immediately halt its strikes.
That resolution, adopted by a vote of 13-0 with Russia and China abstaining, also condemned Iran’s actions in the Strait of Hormuz as a threat to international peace and security and called for an immediate end to all actions blocking shipping.