U.N. Secretary-General Antonio Guterres was barred from entering Israel on Wednesday because he had not “unequivocally” condemned Iran’s missile attack.
The country’s foreign minister, Israel Katz, announced he has designated the veteran Portuguese career diplomat “persona non grata,” meaning he cannot enter Israel, the Times of Israel reports.
The Foreign Ministry said the decision is a reaction to Guterres’s meek response after Iran’s missile attack, “in which he failed to mention Iran by name and did not unequivocally condemn its grave aggression.”
Guterres’s policies throughout the war have “provided backing to terrorists, rapists and murderers from Hamas, Hezbollah, and the Houthis, and now to the mothership of global terror, Iran.”
In a statement, Katz affirmed “anyone who cannot unequivocally condemn Iran’s heinous attack on Israel, as nearly all the countries of the world have done, does not deserve to set foot on Israeli soil.”
He added, Guterres would be remembered “as a stain on the history of the U.N.”.