The United Nations overwhelmingly voted on Wednesday to adopt an Iranian and Syrian authored resolution that calls on nations across the globe to denounce violence and extremism.
The U.N.’s General Assembly voted by consensus to approve the "World Against Violent Extremism" (WAVE) Act, which critics lambasted as hypocritical, given Iran’s designation as one of the global leaders in executions and state-sponsored terrorism.
Iran’s WAVE Act urges member nations to take "appropriate measures to strengthen universal peace and to achieve international cooperation in solving international problems of an economic, social, cultural, or humanitarian character," according to text of the resolution.
It also encourages "respect for human rights and for fundamental freedoms for all without distinction of any kind such as to race, color, sex, language, religion, political or other opinions, national or social origin, property, birth, or other status."
Iran also asks that member states refrain "from the threat or use of force."
Israel was one of the lone voices to raise objections to the measure and call out Iran for attempting to paper over its poor human rights record and ongoing support for terror groups such as Hezbollah.
"The Iranian theocracy has presented a resolution that is riddled with hypocrisy," Israel’s U.N. Ambassador Ron Prosor said before the General Assembly. "Iran’s aspirations cannot be allowed to drown out the cries of its people who are victims of a regime that pretends to be progressive, but is in truth tragically regressive."
"Iran is one of the world's worst human rights abusers," Prosor said. "This is a regime that hangs gays, stones women, imprisons journalists, and executes political opponents."
"Iran calling for nations to denounce violence and extremism could easily fill the pages of absurdist fiction," he said.
"Reading through the document before us, it wasn’t clear to me if I was reading a U.N. resolution or President Rouhani’s New Year’s resolution," Prosor said. "After all, Iran is the world’s primary sponsor of terror responsible for the murder of thousands of innocent civilians from Bangkok to Burgas and Buenos Aires."
Iran leads the world in executions, having killed nearly 530 people in 2013. Executions have also spiked since President Hassan Rouhani took office, leading some to say that this clashes with his image as a purported "moderate."
Iran is known to hang children, ethnic minorities, and homosexuals.
Iran is also one of the globe’s leading state-sponsors of terrorism and serves as the main financial backer of the terror group Hezbollah.
Iran’s Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei ordered his country’s elite fighting forces to step up terror attacks against the West in August 2012.
Iran has also emerged as a leading presence in the Syrian civil war, where it is helping Hezbollah commit terror acts against rebels fighting to depose Syrian President Bashar al-Assad.
Additionally, it acts as one of the principal weapons suppliers in the Middle East and regularly threatens to destroy Israel and America using both conventional and nuclear weapons.
Human rights activists said that the WAVE Act is just another example of the ways in which rogue regimes take control of the U.N.
"At first one might think it odd that Iran and Syria have just led the U.N. General Assembly in adopting a resolution on ‘a world against violence and violent extremism’—but at the U.N. it all makes sense," said Anne Bayefsky, director of the Touro Institute on Human Rights and the Holocaust.
"It's an organization which has no definition of terrorism because according to the folks who control the place, the 'Terrorists R Us,'" Bayefsky said. "So there's no problem condemning extremists, because the extremists are us too. The saddest part? American taxpayers—aka extremists—are paying for this production line."