NEW YORK — Donald Trump stood before the United Nations General Assembly on Tuesday and laid out what he called a simple choice on Iran: a deal that lets the country rebuild, or annihilation.
"I have a big decision to make," Trump told nearly 130 heads of state gathered at UN headquarters. "Will a deal be made with Iran that lets them rebuild and create a far greater country than it ever was before, maybe one of the greatest in the Middle East or even the world? Or do I annihilate the Islamic Republic and do it quickly, never giving them a chance to kill and destroy people and countries again?"
He went further than that, actually. "Do I drive them into hell with no chance of survival and no hope of future greatness or generations?" he asked the room. It wasn't the first time he'd floated the word.
He'd used it in an Axios interview just days earlier, telling Barak Ravid that "anything could happen with me." But saying it from the UN podium, with an Iranian delegation seated in the chamber, was a different kind of message.
The speech landed at the tail end of a war that has now dragged on since late February, when the US joined Israel in striking Iran's nuclear sites, a campaign Trump once described as "totally obliterating everything." It didn't work out that way.
Iran held onto a stockpile of near-weapons-grade enriched uranium that American strikes are believed to have buried rather than destroyed, and Tehran has spent the months since hitting back at Gulf states hosting US forces.
More recently, Houthi fighters allied with Iran have tightened their grip on the Bab el-Mandeb Strait, a chokepoint at the mouth of the Red Sea, adding pressure on global oil markets already rattled by Iran's restrictions on shipping through the Strait of Hormuz. Roughly a fifth of the world's oil and gas flows through those waters. Saudi Arabia, a US ally whose forces have struggled against the Houthi advance, has taken the brunt of it.
Trump didn't dwell on the military setbacks. Instead he cast himself as a dealmaker biding his time. "I believe we'll make a deal right after the election because it doesn't make sense for them not to," he said, referring to November's midterms. "They're waiting to see how I do in the midterm election." He insisted the vote wouldn't change his calculus either way. "I am not running," he said. "I gave absolutely no credence and will not give credence to the election when it comes to Iran."
Here's the part that complicates the annihilation talk: according to Axios, American and Iranian officials met in New York on the sidelines of the Assembly, and Trump himself said the meeting "went very well." Several Arab governments have reportedly been quietly shuttling messages between Washington and Tehran, trying to set up something more formal.
None of it has been confirmed as a breakthrough. But it's a notable contrast to a president who, only hours earlier, was describing "no hope of future greatness" for the other side of the table.
Oil traders noticed.
Crude prices eased after word of the hours-long talks got out, a small but telling sign of how closely markets are tracking any hint that the Hormuz standoff might loosen.
Outside the speech's rhetoric, the political ground under Trump looks shakier than it did a year ago.
A CNN/SSRS poll released the same day found 71% of voters disapprove of his handling of foreign policy, the worst mark of either of his presidencies. A separate NBC News poll put overall disapproval at 56%, with a majority saying his policies have hurt the economy rather than helped it.
Inside the hall, diplomats who watched Trump claim credit last year for "ending" the Iran conflict were now watching him defend a war still very much underway. Analysts covering the summit noted the applause was thin. Some delegations sat through the Iran section of the speech without visible reaction at all.
Trump used the same address to press other points: calling on nations to help "isolate" Iran's government economically, describing Mexican drug cartels as "the ISIS of the Western Hemisphere," and signing an Arctic defense agreement with Greenland and Denmark.
But it was the Iran language that dominated coverage from Reuters to the Associated Press to state media in Tehran, where officials have so far declined to respond publicly to the annihilation threat.
For now, the war sits exactly where it's sat for months: too costly for either side to walk away from cleanly, and too raw for either side to trust the other's signals. Whether Tuesday's sideline meeting turns into something more than a headline is likely to become clearer only after November 3, when Trump says the real negotiating will finally begin.
- Trump told the UN General Assembly he faces a "big decision" on Iran: a postelection deal, or what he called annihilating the Islamic Republic and driving it "into hell."
- The threat came seven months into a war that started when the US joined Israel in striking Iran's nuclear sites in February, a war that hasn't gone as cleanly as Washington once claimed.
- Hours after the speech, Axios reported that American and Iranian officials had actually sat down together in New York, a meeting Trump himself called productive.
- Polling released the same day showed Trump's foreign policy approval at some of the lowest levels of his presidency, with 71% disapproving in one CNN/SSRS survey.
