Trump Threatens Iran With ‘Annihilation’ at UN, While World Leaders Focus Fire on Israel

President Trump broke consensus at the United Nations Tuesday, threatening the Islamic Republic of Iran with “annihilation” if it doesn’t make a deal, while other world leaders turned their ire on a familiar boogeyman, Israel. Jordan’s King Abdullah, President Recep Tayyip Erdogan of Turkey, and others — including, pointedly, the outgoing UN secretary General Antonio Guterres — accused Israel of war crimes and worse. The Jewish state has a “genocidal mentality with an insatiable appetite for killing,” Mr. Erdogan said.Mr. Trump, instead, turned his ire on the world’s “number one sponsor of terror,” Iran. “I have a big decision to make,” Mr. Trump said in his address to the General Assembly. “Will a deal be made with Iran that lets them rebuild and create a far greater country than it ever was before,” or “do I drive them into hell with no chance of survival and no hope of future greatness or generations?”With rumors of a possible private UN meeting with Iran’s President Masoud Pezeshkian, Mr. Trump added that “I believe we’ll make a deal right after the election, because it doesn’t make sense for them not to.”As for Israel, Mr. Trump noted the approach of the third anniversary of October 7, 2023, when “terrorists funded by Iran tortured, mutilated, and killed 1,200 innocent civilians, including dozens of Americans.” He noted that “Iran’s Supreme Leader celebrated that massacre and called it a ‘service to humanity.’” The Iranian regime, Mr. Trump added, “slaughtered over 72,000 of its own citizens this year.”The president received a smattering of applause from the gathered diplomats and heads of state, and most of the cheering came from the American table. The Cuban delegation left the hall when Mr. Trump noted that it is a “failed state.” In contrast, Mr. Guterres got several extended cheers during his speech, in which Iran was never mentioned by name. Mr. Guterres, in his speech, mentioned the need to preserve freedom of navigation, although he failed to mention Iran, which is blocking the Hormuz Strait, or its proxy, the Houthis, which are blocking ships in the Red Sea. Israel and the “occupied Palestinian Territories,” in contrast, merited eight paragraphs. While Mr. Guterres called the Hamas attack of 2023 “abhorrent,” he referred to “the Israeli conduct” since then with words like “genocide” and “ethnic cleansing.” To noisy applause, Mr. Guterres spoke of an “onslaught on Palestinians in Gaza, with a scale of killing and destruction unlike anything I have witnessed in all my years as Secretary-General.”72,000 Gazans have been killed in Gaza since 2023, according to Hamas’s numbers. In the same period, between 150,000 and 400,000 people were killed in Sudan, which at best merited one throwaway sentence in several speeches, including Mr. Guterres’s. Mr. Trump’s address at times sounded like an election stump speech, mentioning his peace making in eight world disputes and what he described as his economic successes. In that, though, he was no different than others. Most heads of state similarly couch UN speeches in an appeal to universalism, while in fact they tout their political success for home audiences.Mr. Trump said the UN needs to drop its “far left” sensibilities, including “open borders” and the idea of a global government. He vowed to continue a campaign to dismantle the International Criminal Court, the Hague venue that has issued global arrest warrants against Prime Minister Netanyahu of Israel.Mr. Netanyahu is expected to address the assembly on Thursday. In past years he spoke to an empty Assembly hall. This year he is expected to get an even colder reception than Mr. Trump did on Tuesday.

Trump Threatens Iran With ‘Annihilation’ at UN, While World Leaders Focus Fire on Israel

Trump Threatens Iran With ‘Annihilation’ at UN, While World Leaders Focus Fire on Israel

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