Iran and 12 other delegations staged a walkout at a summit in Baku to protest Israeli president Isaac Herzog’s address, while Tehran called for the Israeli regime to be expelled from the forum.
Iranian Deputy Foreign Minister Kazem Gharibabadi urged member states to expel the regime from the Conference on Interaction and Confidence-Building Measures in Asia (CICA).
The walkout was joined by delegations from Palestine, Pakistan, Saudi Arabia, Turkey, Iraq, Egypt, Kuwait, Qatar, Jordan, Malaysia, Indonesia and Bangladesh. The 13 delegations represented nearly half of the 28 attending the summit.
Addressing the summit, Gharibabadi described Israel as “the main source of insecurity and instability in Asia” and urged member states “not to remain silent over the regime’s crimes.”
The deputy FM also described the US and Israel as “the world’s greatest sources of insecurity and lawlessness,” warning that “their aggression would spread to all independent countries if the international community failed to stop them.”
He said Washington had acted as though it were above the law, undermining international mechanisms, while Israel, which is not a party to international disarmament and arms-control treaties, had developed various types of weapons of mass destruction.
He also condemned the Israeli regime’s military aggression against neighboring countries and other states across West Asia, describing it as “a symbol of aggression and wrongdoing in the region and beyond.”
CICA was proposed in 1992 by then-Kazakh President Nursultan Nazarbayev to promote cooperation and confidence-building measures across Asia.
The walkout in Baku echoed a similar protest at the United Nations General Assembly on September 24, when delegations from nearly 70 countries walked out or left their seats vacant as Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu began his address.
Both protests came amid mounting international condemnation of Israel’s genocidal war on Gaza and the devastating toll it has taken on Palestinian civilians.
On October 12, the UN Human Rights Office reported that it had verified 1,076 Palestinian deaths in Gaza between the announcement of the so-called ceasefire on October 10, 2025, and the end of July 2026. The verified toll included 268 children and 126 women.
The destruction in Gaza has been catastrophic, with UN assessments showing that 82 percent of structures in the besieged Strip had been damaged by June 2026, leaving homes, hospitals, schools and essential infrastructure in ruins.
The Palestinian Ministry of Health has reported that 74,382 Palestinians have been killed and 175,416 wounded in Gaza since October 7, 2023, when Israel launched its genocidal war on the territory.
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