Middle East Tensions Overshadow United Nations Summit

Welcome back to Foreign Policy’s SitRep. Good afternoon from New York City’s Turtle Bay neighborhood, where we’ll be ducking and weaving through the gridlocked traffic all week to bring you the latest from the United Nations General Assembly high-level week and its myriad side events across Manhattan.

Alright, here’s what’s on tap for the day: Israel’s tit for tat with Hezbollah sets the stage for the first day of UNGA madness, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky touches down for a high-stakes visit to the United States, and more than 140 nations push back on Russia’s effort to railroad a key United Nations reform measure.

Diplomatic Split Screen

On Monday morning, Israeli forces struck more than 800 Hezbollah targets across Lebanon, fueling fears that the conflict in the Middle East is on the precipice of a dramatic escalation. The bombing campaign, the most intense since Hezbollah began firing on Israel on Oct. 8, 2023, came as more than 100 world leaders and their legions of staff descend on New York City for the United Nations General Assembly, threatening to overshadow the annual premier diplomatic event.

The war in Gaza has laid bare the impotence of the United Nations as a body for conflict resolution.The Security Council in particular has largely been absent from efforts to secure a deal for a cease-fire and the release of hostages, and it has proved unable to prevent regional tensions from spinning out of control.

Context. The United Nations’ General Assembly’s high-level week is often overtaken by events. In 2022, the Kremlin spoiled the party by announcing that it would hold referendums on whether to illegally annex parts of Ukraine—some of which Russia didn’t control militarily. The weekend before the high-level meeting last year, French President Emmanuel Macron announced that French troops would leave Niger, throwing United Nations peacekeeping efforts in Africa into chaos.

Global reaction. But the split screen was particularly striking on Monday as a cavalcade of world leaders streamed up to the U.N. podium, including Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi and Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni. The glitz and glamor of New York was on display too, amid the snarled traffic and rows of police cordons. Meryl Streep sat alongside United Nations Secretary-General António Guterres at an event on women’s inclusion in Afghanistan. Edward Norton was also walking on the grounds.

A few blocks away, Matt Damon and Hillary Clinton shook hands at a Clinton Global Initiative event. U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken apologized at a nearby artificial intelligence-themed event for standing in between conference-goers and a coffee break. Even the elusive estranged British royal, Prince Harry, was spotted nearby.

Yet despite all the celebrities and diplomatic hoopla, the U.N. seemed far away from its past role as a global peace broker—caught on its high-level week without a clear game plan to stop the escalating violence in Lebanon.

U.N. officials called for an immediate cease-fire but had no teeth to back it up. And through his spokesperson, Guterres said he was “gravely alarmed” by the escalating tensions sparked by Israel and “gravely alarmed” about Hezbollah’s continued response. Yet the first day’s agenda, mostly about the future of how the United Nations will look and not about how it will respond to the present crisis, went on as planned.

U.S. response. Meanwhile, the United States called on Israel to help ensure the safety of American citizens who were evacuating from Lebanon, and the Pentagon announced that it was sending more U.S. troops to the region, adding to the aircraft carrier, the detached carrier air wing, and thousands of U.S. forces that are already there. The U.S.S. Harry S. Truman is also currently heading back to the Mediterranean on a previously scheduled deployment.

U.S. President Joe Biden is set to address the General Assembly in person tomorrow.

At a roundtable with journalists on Monday morning, Iran’s new president, Masoud Pezeshkian, said that Tehran does not want a wider regional war, noting that it would not be of benefit to anyone. He also accused Israel of fanning the flames in the region. “We do not seek war; we do not seek instability,” he said. He also pledged to continue arming Hezbollah so long as the United States continues to arm Israel.

Asked whether Iran still planned to respond to the killing of Hamas’s political leader, Ismail Haniyeh, in Tehran in July, Pezeshkian said that Iran would give its answer “at the appropriate time, at the appropriate place.”

Out of options? “What we are seeing right now in Lebanon is a very clear indication that the dominoes are falling,” said Majed al-Ansari, a spokesperson for Qatar’s Foreign Ministry, at a side event at the Concordia Summit moderated by Amy. “If we don’t step in—all of us, collectively, as the international community—to ensure that there is no escalation to the level of an open war between Hezbollah and Israel, we are going to be seeing even worse shades of human catastrophe in the region than the terrible pictures we’ve been seeing all through the last year,” he said.

Outside the Bubble

What should be high on your radar, if it isn’t already.

Ukraine week. Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky has touched down in the United States and is set to present Biden with a so-called “victory plan” when they meet on Thursday in Washington. The White House is also preparing a new $375 million military aid package for Ukraine, although American weapons manufacturers are far behind the pace of arms deliveries that Kyiv is asking for.

Zelensky is also expected to speak before the General Assembly on Wednesday. He’s not going to have the support of everyone who’s assembled here in New York for some of what he’s asking for—such as Western nations to lift restrictions on Ukraine’s targeting of Russia with weapons that they supplied. German Chancellor Olaf Scholz came out against lifting targeting restrictions before meeting Zelensky on Monday.

Back to the future. The General Assembly rebuffed Russia’s attempt to railroad the proposed “Pact for the Future” on Sunday, a signature Guterres initiative intended to revitalize the world body’s influence after years of Chinese and Russian stonewalling. After nearly a year of preparation, Russia tried to nix 25 parts of the draft, including provisions on gender empowerment and sexual and reproductive rights, but the Kremlin’s push to torpedo the pact was shot down by 143 votes to seven, with Belarus, Iran, Syria, and Venezuela among the few nations who joined in supporting Russia.

Own goal. The U.S. House select committee on the Chinese Communist Party said in a report released on Monday that American partnerships with Chinese researchers had fueled Beijing’s leaps forward on critical military technologies, such as hypersonics and nuclear weapons. The Republican-led panel honed in on institutes at the University of California, Berkeley and Georgia Institute of Technology, and called for federally funded grants to have stricter guidelines.

Snapshot

Smoke billows from the site of an Israeli airstrike in Marjayoun, Lebanon, near the Lebanon-Israel border, on Sept. 23. Rabih Daher/AFP via Getty Images

What’s on Tap for Tuesday

1:30 p.m.: Summit of the Global Coalition to Address Synthetic Drug Threats

3:00 p.m.: The U.N. Security Council holds a ministerial meeting on Ukraine, with Zelensky speaking.

4:30 p.m.: The Partnership for Global Infrastructure and Investment holds a roundtable on the Lobito Corridor focused on “Supporting Transcontinental Connectivity.”

5:45 p.m.: Blinken and Biden meet with Senegalese President Bassirou Diomaye Faye

7:30 p.m.: Biden Transatlantic Working Dinner

Quote of the Day

“My suggestion is: Let us end the discussion about red lines.”

— Danish Prime Minister Mette Frederiksen backs up Ukraine’s calls for more authority to use U.S. weapons inside of Russia in a Bloomberg interview that aired on Monday.