At Security Council, Iranian dissident accuses UN of failing to adequately respond to protest crackdown

By AP 15 January 2026, 10:46 pm

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Masih Alinejad, journalist and political dissident, speaks during a United Nations Security Council meeting on the situation in Iran at the United Nations headquarters on January 15, 2026, in New York City. (Michael M. Santiago/Getty Images/AFP)

Masih Alinejad, one of the most vocal Iranian dissidents in the US, accuses the United Nations and the Security Council of failing “to respond with the urgency this moment demands,” at an emergency UN Security Council meeting called to discuss Tehran’s brutal repression of the anti-regime protests.

In October, two purported Russian mobsters were each sentenced to 25 years behind bars for hiring a hitman to kill Alinejad at her Brooklyn home on behalf of the Iranian government.

Sitting across the table from the Iranian ambassador to the UN, Alinejad, who came after an invitation from the US, says that “the members of this body have forgotten the privilege and responsibility of sitting in this room.”