President Donald Trump told the UN General Assembly on Tuesday that Iran faces a binary choice: a negotiated deal that would let it "rebuild and create a far greater country than it ever was before," or what he called annihilation. "Do I drive them into hell with no chance of survival and no hope of future greatness or generations?" Trump asked delegates during a roughly 35-minute address, the second speech of the day after Brazil's Lula da Silva.
Iranian President Masoud Pezeshkian and Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi, both in New York for the General Assembly, did not enter the hall for the speech. Iranian delegation members who were present walked out as Trump turned to discussing military strikes on Iran, according to witnesses in the chamber. Only one lower-level staffer remained seated through the remainder of the address.
The speech and the walkout
Trump predicted a deal would come after the US midterm elections, telling the assembly "they're waiting to see how I do on the midterm election. What they don't realize is that I'm not running." He declared Iran had been "the bully of the Middle East, but they are the bully no longer," framing seven months of war as having permanently altered the regional balance of power, a claim that describes an intent rather than a demonstrated outcome.
The walkout was not universal disengagement. After the speech, Trump revealed that senior aides Jared Kushner and Steve Witkoff had met with the Iranian delegation for roughly three hours in what he called a "very good meeting," with another session scheduled. "It's two choices," Trump said. "In one case, it's obliteration, and the other alternative is potential greatness." The sequence, annihilation threatened from the podium, negotiation continuing in a side room of the same building, unfolded within hours of each other on the same day.
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An unresolved binary
Nothing said in the hall or reported from the sideline meeting settled which of Trump's two paths Washington intends to take. The Iranian delegation's selective presence, absent for the threat, present for the negotiation, may indicate Tehran is treating the annihilation language as rhetoric to be endured rather than a red line requiring full diplomatic rupture. Pezeshkian is scheduled to address the General Assembly on Wednesday, a session that could show whether Iran responds to Tuesday's speech in kind or continues the quieter track opened by Kushner and Witkoff.
What is established, according to Trump's own account, is that a further meeting between US and Iranian officials is scheduled. Whether that meeting narrows the distance between "potential greatness" and "obliteration," in Trump's own framing, or simply extends a standoff neither side has shown willingness to end, remains an open question the UN podium did not answer this week.
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