US Ambassador Nikki Haley addressing the UN Security Council. Photo: Reuters / Mike Segar.

Nikki Haley, the US ambassador to the United Nations, expressed frustration on Tuesday with the continued defiance of UN Security Council resolutions by the regime in Tehran.

“The United States has repeatedly warned the world about Iran’s deliberate efforts to destabilize the Middle East and defy international norms,” Haley said in a statement published ahead of a Security Council debate on Iran’s latest ballistic missile test last Saturday. “The international community cannot keep turning a blind eye every time Iran blatantly ignores Security Council resolutions.”

Paying tribute to the UK and France for raising the ballistic missile test at the UN’s highest body, Haley noted that the test — which Iran has neither confirmed nor denied — was “dangerous and concerning, but not surprising.”

“If the Security Council is serious about holding Iran accountable and enforcing our resolutions, then at a minimum we should be able to deliver a unanimous condemnation of this provocative missile test,” Haley emphasized.

Iranian leaders insist that they have the sovereign right to engage in ballistic missiles tests.

“Missile tests…are carried out for defense and the country’s deterrence, and we will continue this,” Brig- Gen. Abolfazl Shekarchi, spokesman for Iran’s armed forces, was quoted as saying by the semi-official Tasnim news agency in the wake of American and French condemnation of Saturday’s test.

“We will continue to both develop and test missiles,” Shekarchi said. “This is outside the framework of (nuclear) negotiations and part of our national security, for which we will not ask any country’s permission.”