Waltz Blasts Iran Envoy: ‘This Is Not Tehran. This Is The United States Of America’

America’s man at the United Nations unloaded on Iran’s chief diplomat Thursday, delivering a blistering smackdown after Tehran’s envoy tried to shut down an emergency Security Council session on the Gulf crisis — telling him bluntly that intimidation tactics don’t fly on East River soil.

“This is not Tehran,” U.S. Ambassador to the U.N. Mike Waltz thundered at Iranian envoy Amir Saeid Iravani after the Iranian diplomat suggested the council shouldn’t even be meeting and accused Waltz and other members of spreading lies. “This is the United States of America. This is the United Nations Security Council. You will not silence this body.”

Waltz — the first Green Beret elected to Congress, who served 27 years in the U.S. Army, including multiple combat tours in Afghanistan, the Middle East, and Africa, and received four Bronze Stars, including two for valor — wasn’t done. He continued:

The representative goes on to say that the ambassador from Bahrain, the foreign minister, myself, and other members of this body are full of lies; they were lying. Let me ask you. What here is a lie? Who’s lying here? Is this Arab family in Bahrain in a residential neighborhood whose home was destroyed by an Iranian Shahed drone, are they lying? Crowne Plaza Hotel, full of tourists? Are they lying? First responders whose headquarters were struck deliberately so that they couldn’t put out fires:  Were they lying? Is this hypocrisy? Is this what this council is here to denounce today? I ask the representative, are these lies? Are these photographs, are these lies? I’d say not.

Iran will not silence us on our own soil.

That might work in Tehran, but not in the UN Security Council.

We will tell the truth. pic.twitter.com/AwzEbdETzn

— Ambassador Mike Waltz (@USAmbUN) July 2, 2026

The fireworks capped a brutal day at the U.N., where Bahrain’s Foreign Minister Abdullatif bin Rashid al-Zayani, laid out a horror-show tally: 808 Iranian missile and drone strikes on his tiny kingdom since late February, killing three civilians and wounding 465 more. Al-Zayani said the barrage — 203 ballistic missiles and more than 600 armed drones — hammered homes, hospitals and infrastructure, and warned that an April strike on an ammonia tank came within a hair of triggering a toxic gas catastrophe.

Waltz, addressing the council earlier, had warned that President Donald Trump’s patience with Tehran was wearing thin, accusing the regime of strangling global trade by choking off the vital Strait of Hormuz — a chokepoint UN economists say threatens 61 developing nations. “Iran cannot, and we cannot allow it to, hold the world’s economy hostage,” Waltz declared, insisting a “transformative” opportunity for ordinary Iranians remains on the table if Tehran changes course.

Iranian envoy Iravani claimed Waltz’s remarks were “lies and disinformation,” insisting Iran’s strikes were purely defensive retaliation against American bases used to launch attacks on Iranian soil. He argued Washington has no business dictating security in the Gulf, insisting only regional nations should call the shots.

Waltz was having no part of it.