TEHRAN – Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi and Saudi Foreign Minister Faisal bin Farhan held an urgent phone call on Friday addressing the Israeli regime’s escalating war crimes in Palestine.

The ministers focused on Israel’s engineered famine in Gaza and its illegal West Bank annexation plans, vowing joint action through Islamic bodies.

Araghchi condemned Israel’s deliberate starvation tactics, particularly the blockade on food and medicine, warning that the regime’s expansionist ambitions – evidenced by new Knesset measures to impose control over the West Bank – reveal a systematic effort to “erase Palestine as a land, nation, and independent identity.”

He urged the Organization of Islamic Cooperation (OIC) and international mechanisms to break the siege and halt the genocide.

Bin Farhan reiterated Saudi Arabia’s readiness to collaborate, stressing the need for “practical and immediate measures” through Arab-Islamic initiatives.

The ministers also discussed Iran’s nuclear negotiations with European powers, underscoring the deepening of bilateral coordination amid regional crises.

Iran-Bangladesh call for OIC session
 
Additionally, Araghchi and Bangladesh’s Minister of Foreign Affairs Md. Touhid Hossain convened by phone on Thursday, condemning Israeli atrocities and demanding immediate OIC intervention.

The Iranian top diplomat denounced Israel’s annexation designs on the West Bank as part of a "criminal scheme to erase Palestine," urging Islamic nations to activate "all international mechanisms" to halt the genocide and rush aid to Gaza.

Hossain echoed calls for "decisive action" through the OIC, while both ministers reaffirmed bilateral ties and shared regional perspectives.

Araghchi also thanked Bangladesh for condemning recent U.S.-Israeli aggression against Iran—a nod to the conversation’s broader geopolitical alignment.  

Further elaborating on the deliberate nature of the humanitarian crisis, Iran’s Foreign Ministry Spokesman Esmail Baghaei asserted that Israel and the U.S. orchestrated Gaza’s famine through a deliberate policy of weaponizing food, citing their 2021 rejection of a landmark UN resolution affirming food access as a human right.

In a Friday statement on X, Baghaei highlighted that Resolution 76/166—explicitly prohibiting starvation as a method of warfare—was opposed only by Israel and the U.S., asking: "Didn’t their opposition indicate a premeditated policy of using food as a weapon?"

Gaza’s ‘death phase’

The unfolding tragedy of Gaza’s situation is tragically marked by another 24 hours of lethal Israeli attacks on the strip, including the killing of 34 Palestinians at aid distribution points.

UN reports confirm over 1,000 civilians have been shot dead while seeking food in recent months.

Despite global outcry, Israel has enforced a near-total blockade since March, funneling minimal aid through the U.S.-backed "Gaza Humanitarian Foundation"—a secretive, Mossad- and Israeli War Ministry-funded scheme reportedly backed by an undisclosed $100 million donor, approved amid resignations and deadly distribution chaos. The scheme forces civilians into tightly controlled, biometric-tracked “sterile zones” in southern Gaza criticized as concentration camps.

"We cannot operate where armed actors are present," stated Ross Smith, the UN World Food Programme’s emergency director, effectively acknowledging aid’s paralysis across 88% of Gaza now under evacuation orders or militarized zones. With 2.1 million displaced Palestinians facing "nowhere to run," food production has collapsed and water infrastructure lies in ruins.  

Acute malnutrition now kills as efficiently as munitions:  

- 470,000+ face famine (IPC Phase 5 "catastrophe")

- 75% of households report critical water insecurity

- Flour prices up 3,000%; families survive on one meal daily

Latest reports indicate over 59,000 Palestinians killed—mostly women and children—since October 2023.

As Baghaei stressed, this constitutes “ethnic cleansing” enabled by Western backers whose inaction is “disgraceful.”