Iran questions UN’s pro-Israel report

Iran’s Foreign Ministry has expressed concern over the Zionist Occupation Israeli regime’s wielding influence on UN’s investigation of Tel Aviv’s deadly attack on a Gaza-bound flotilla in international waters in May 2010.

On May 31, 2010, Israeli navy commandos launched the bloody onslaught against the six-ship civilian aid convoy on May 31, 2010 in the Mediterranean sea water en route to the blockaded Gaza Strip.

Lots of Turkish nationals, including a Turkish-American teenager, were killed and more than were wounded onboard the vessel Mavi Marmara.

According to UN’s report on the incident, “Israel’s decision to board the vessels with such substantial force at a great distance from the blockade zone and with no final warning immediately prior to the boarding was excessive and unreasonable.”

The UN report, however, also legitimizes Israel’s military attack against civilian ships on international waters by claiming that the effort by the covoy to deliver relief aid supplies to the illegally blockaded Gaza was ‘reckless.’

The flotilla, however, “acted recklessly in attempting to breach the naval blockade,” said the UN report added.

The Islamic Republic of Iran welcomed the expulsion of Israel’s ambassador from Turkey, and called for preventing Tel Aviv from influencing the results of an independent international investigation.

In its report, UN’s special panel also deemed blockade imposed by Israel on Gaza a “legitimate security measure… that its implementation complied with the requirements of international law” since Tel Aviv “faces a real threat to its security from militant groups in Gaza.”

Israel has maintained a crippling siege of the Gaza Strip since 2007, and is facing mounting pressure from the international community to lift it, as the blockade severely affects the entire population in the impoverished territory.

Some 1.5 million people in Gaza are being denied basic rights, including the freedom of movement and the right to appropriate living conditions, work, health and education.