On 28 February, less than 24 hours after the United States and Israel launched strikes on Iran, the UN Security Council met to discuss the crisis in the Middle East. With no draft resolution or statement on the table, the meeting was an opportunity for Council members to signal where their sympathies lay in the conflict. By this metric, it was a success for Washington. Most Council members avoided criticising the U.S.-Israeli operation or criticised it very obliquely.

The United Kingdom, holding the Council presidency for February, convened the meeting at the request of both critics of the U.S.-Israeli operation, including China and Russia, and U.S. friends, including France and Bahrain. Diplomats seemed keen to gather before the U.S. took over the presidency on 1 March, which might have allowed it to delay – though not block – debate.

Not all participants gave the U.S. and Israel a free pass for resorting to force without UN authorisation. Secretary-General António Guterres, who generally prefers to minimise friction with the Council’s veto-wielding powers, noted that opportunities for diplomacy with Iran over its nuclear program had been “squandered”. China and Russia delivered robust denunciations of the U.S.-Israeli intervention. They were joined by Colombia and Pakistan, which criticised the action as breaching international law, although both also condemned Iran’s strikes on Gulf Arab countries.

Other Council members were more circumspect. The five European members – France, Denmark Greece, Latvia and the UK – all framed the crisis in similar terms, placing the burden of blame on Iran for its nuclear activities and January crackdown on protesters, while passing over the legality of the U.S.-Israeli strikes without comment. Like all other members, they called for restraint and diplomacy going forward. Bahrain, a victim of Iranian retaliation earlier in the day, unsurprisingly focused on Tehran’s acts of aggression without commenting on the U.S. and Israel in the crisis.

U.S. Ambassador Mike Waltz set out to justify Washington’s actions with reference to past Security Council resolutions and Iran’s alleged failure to respond constructively to U.S. diplomatic overtures. In his main statement and a tetchy exchange with Iranian Ambassador Amir-Saeid Iravani – who used his own intervention to frame Iran’s actions as legitimate under the UN Charter and remind the Council of its responsibility for international peace and security – Waltz repeated President Donald Trump’s line that the U.S. is supporting the “great Iranian people” against their rulers. News of the death of Iranian Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei came too late to feature in the debate.

Council members’ wariness of offending the U.S. echoed a similar emergency meeting in January after the seizure of Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro, during which U.S. allies sidestepped direct criticism of Washington. While the Trump administration’s disregard for international law disturbs its allies at the UN, few see any advantage in challenging Washington publicly. At one point, Ambassador Waltz misspoke and referred to the body as the “United States Security Council”. The U.S. certainly seems to have most of the Council under its thumb.