Iran just showed the UN photos of children killed by America
6 days ago · 25 September 2026Share
The United Nations General Assembly Hall in New York, with the UN emblem on the gold wall and delegates seated in the rows. Basil D Soufi · CC BY-SA 3.0
Iran's president just stood up in New York and held photos of dead kids in front of the whole UN.
His country is at war with America right now. And this is the room where America hosts everyone.
Masoud Pezeshkian gave the speech a few hours ago. One day after Donald Trump told that same room he was thinking about wiping out Iran's government for good, so it could never threaten anyone again.
So what did Iran's president do with that? He held up two sets of photos. One of Iran's late Supreme Leader, Ali Khamenei. And one of more than 150 Iranian schoolchildren, killed in the first days of this war.
The war is nearly seven months old now.
And this might be the first time ever that a foreign leader has stood in that room, in person, while their country is at war with the United States, the country hosting them.
Masoud Pezeshkian told the room his country has only defended itself, that Iran is not made up of terrorists, and that America and Israel are the ones who attacked.
Then he named Donald Trump directly. He said Iran is ready for dialogue and diplomacy, but not on the basis of force.
Now, those photos of children. They're from a strike on a primary school in Minab, in southern Iran, on 28 February.
Six days ago, a UN fact-finding mission looked into that strike. It said it found what it called reasonable grounds to believe the United States committed a war crime there, by launching an attack it called indiscriminate.
The numbers move depending who you ask. Somewhere between 150 and 157 people killed. Somewhere between 120 and 123 of them children.
A second strike that same day, on a sports complex in Lamerd, killed 22 civilians, the mission said.
So none of that finding is new. It came out six days ago.
What's new is Iran's president flying to New York and putting the photos in front of the cameras himself.
The White House already rejected the UN's finding once. Anna Kelly, who speaks for the White House, dismissed the Human Rights Council's work as nonsense when the report first landed.
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The United Nations Secretariat Building, part of the UN Headquarters complex, in New York City.PCN02WPS · CC BY-SA 4.0
Today she went further. She called Iran an evil country.
And here's what happened in the room while Pezeshkian spoke. The American delegation's seats sat empty. Israel's delegation walked out too.
A day earlier, Iran's own delegation had walked out during Donald Trump's speech.
So every side is walking out on every other side. But behind that, there was still contact.
Steve Witkoff and Jared Kushner, two US envoys, sat down with Iranian officials for about three hours on the sidelines of the UN. Qatar set the meeting up.
Donald Trump says quote "it was a very good meeting". Though he added the Iranian officials there were not the highest level, just something.
Iran was a lot cooler about it. Esmail Baghaei, who speaks for Iran's Foreign Ministry, says quote "not anything new".
Marco Rubio, the US Secretary of State, played it down too. He called it a continuation of old conversations, not a breakthrough. And he questioned what standing Iran has to lecture anyone on human rights when, he said, it breaks those rules itself.
So what does Iran actually want? According to AP and Newsweek, two things. America ends its blockade on Iranian ports. And America releases Iran's frozen assets.
Donald Trump thinks Iran is just waiting. He believes Iran wants to see how the US midterm elections go on 3 November before it agrees to anything.
Richard Gowan, the UN director at the International Crisis Group, put it simply. He said Pezeshkian even showing up in New York during this war was, in itself, a show of defiance.
Not everyone at the UN this week picked a side. António Costa, the President of the European Council, met Pezeshkian on the sidelines. He told Iran to stop striking its neighbours and get back to working with the UN's nuclear watchdog.
And one more thing sitting in the background. Commercial shipping through the Strait of Hormuz is still well below where it was before the war. Outlets differ on exactly how far below.
So what happens now? Nobody knows if Donald Trump and Masoud Pezeshkian will actually meet face to face while they're both in New York. Nobody knows if America will answer Iran's conditions. And nobody even agrees on what that three-hour meeting was — a real step, or just for show.
Right now, both governments are still describing the exact same meeting two different ways. And in the middle of all of it sit the photos of the children killed in February. Nobody in that room disputed those.
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