U.N. Live Updates: As Trump Threatens Iran, Other Leaders Warn of Deep Divisions
"President Trump said he must decide whether to make a deal or “annihilate” Iran, in a gathering where world leaders typically focus on declarations of global harmony.
Pinned
As President Trump spoke of a stark choice between rebuilding Iran and annihilating it on Tuesday, other world leaders at the United Nations General Assembly warned of the dangers posed by division and unilateral action, underscoring the deep divide between the visions of the president and his counterparts around the globe.
Mr. Trump used his address near the start of the day to defend the war he launched alongside Israel in February, even as allies have begun to openly question whether the United States remains a credible partner.
Japan’s leader, Sanae Takaichi, plans to use her United Nations appearance on Tuesday to promote her country’s desire to play a more active global role in defense and economic matters.
Previewing her speech to the General Assembly on Monday to reporters in Tokyo, Ms. Takaichi said she would focus on issues like climate change, the rule of law and freedom of navigation in international waters.
The podium of the United Nations was an unusual setting for the leader of a global superpower to threaten to “annihilate the Islamic republic” of Iran or to declare that, in another conflict, “to the victor belong the spoils.”
Yet that was exactly what President Trump did on Tuesday, in threatening Iran if it failed to make a deal to end a war that had stretched far longer than Mr. Trump anticipated, and justifying his claims on Venezuelan oil reserves after American forces deposed its leader.
President Trump told reporters on Tuesday that his administration is reviewing a possible ban on U.S. exports of diesel to help lower fuel costs for farmers, truckers and businesses.
Some Republicans in Congress have been calling for a ban on exports as the cost of diesel has hit records because of global supply shortages that have resulted from the U.S.-Israeli war against Iran and the yearslong Russia-Ukraine conflict. The Iran war in particular, experts say, has driven much of the recent increase in diesel prices by reducing refining capacity.
To Lam, Vietnam’s most powerful leader in decades, has been crisscrossing the globe for months seeking to reintroduce his country to the world — as a more confident middle power, a regional economic leader and a defender of free trade that is ready to play a bigger role.
His speech to the United Nations General Assembly on Tuesday is likely to return to these themes.
Addressing the United Nations General Assembly for the last time as France’s president, Emmanuel Macron urged the U.N. to act as a bulwark against those who would create a world ruled by the “law of the jungle.”
“The question before us, in very simple terms, is whether we want to live in this state of nature, with a kind of return to the law of the jungle, or in a civilized international society,” Mr. Macron said.
Representing South Korea’s most open stance in decades towards reconciliation with the North, President Lee Jae Myung called for “an end to this decades-old war on the Korean peninsula” in his speech to the General Assembly. He laid out a vision for cooperation between the North and the South, beginning by reestablishing channels of communication and eventually collaborating on public health, disaster response and climate change.
In a recent interview, Lee had said he would break with decades of policy and encourage the United States to ease sanctions on Pyongyang in exchange for an agreement that it freeze its weapons programs.
President Volodymyr Zelensky of Ukraine said at the United Nations General Assembly on Tuesday that he hoped Russia’s war in his country would end “before winter” and that the Trump administration would help Kyiv do it.
“I hope we will end this war, and President Trump will help us end this war,” Mr. Zelensky said during a meeting with Mr. Trump. “I think we need to do this as quick as possible — before winter,” he added. The U.S. president nodded and repeated his words with approval.
Iran’s armed forces, in a statement carried by state media, called Trump’s address to the General Assembly an “exploitation of the U.N.’s podium to legitimize aggression, insecurity and global banditry.”
Trump had said in the speech that he faced a choice: to strike a deal with Tehran or “annihilate the Islamic Republic.” The military statement said the ultimatum was a “baseless” threat and reflected Washington’s “impasse in its aggression against the Iranian nation” nearly seven months into a conflict that the administration has struggled to find an off-ramp for.
In his speech to the General Assembly on Tuesday afternoon, President Lee Jae Myung of South Korea called artificial intelligence both “a massive opportunity and a crisis for humanity.” He called for global cooperation to ensure that A.I. was used for the benefit of global peace and equality.
Once buoyed by the global A.I. boom, South Korea’s main stock index has crashed, devastating the portfolios of millions of individual investors who were encouraged by Lee’s government to buy stocks.
Iran’s delegation engaged in a frenzy of diplomacy at the U.N., countering U.S. claims of successfully isolating the Islamic Republic’s government. In addition to meeting American officials, Foreign Minister Araghchi met the European Union’s top foreign policy official and the foreign ministers of the U.K., Italy, Austria, Qatar and Azerbaijan, among others. The videos and photographs on Araghchi’s social media page show him warmly greeting, hugging and having bilateral discussions with numerous counterparts.
President Lee Jae Myung of South Korea is addressing the United Nations on Tuesday afternoon, as his government seeks to defuse the growing nuclear threat posed by North Korea.
“By presenting a blueprint for peaceful coexistence on the Korean Peninsula at the U.N. General Assembly, the world’s only universal international organization, we hope to build international momentum for peace on the peninsula,” Mr. Lee’s national security adviser, Wi Sung-lac, said before the speech.
Iran’s state television confirmed that the country’s foreign minister, Abbas Araghchi, had met with the U.S. special envoy Steve Witkoff on the sidelines of the General Assembly on Tuesday. The report said that Araghchi relayed Iran’s stern conditions for reaching a peace deal with the United States, and that those included the immediate lifting of the U.S. naval blockade on Iran’s southern shores, releasing Iran’s frozen funds and ending hostilities on all fronts as a condition for Iran to open the Strait of Hormuz. Araghchi himself has not yet publicly commented on the meeting.
Trump’s event with Persian Gulf leaders actually resembles more of a mini-Arab summit at a critical time in the Middle East. The meeting also includes Ahmed al-Sharaa, the president of Syria, as well as King Abdullah II of Jordan and representatives of Kuwait, Lebanon and Egypt. Trump gave brief remarks celebrating his relationship with the assembled leaders, and reporters were then guided out of the room. Trump did not address the questions they shouted as they left.
Trump is now speaking at an event for the Shield of the Americas, the coalition he formed for countries in the Western Hemisphere. Trump mentioned the blackouts in Cuba and appears perplexed about that country’s power shortages. “They don’t have enough lights, I don’t know what’s going on with Cuba,” Trump said. “But they’re not looking so good.”
Trump made no mention of his own administration’s sanctions against Cuba, which human rights experts from the U.N. have said are contributing to persistent blackouts, food insecurity and critical shortages of medicine.
President Trump said on Tuesday that he supported banning U.S. exports of diesel fuel, prices of which have hit record levels in recent weeks because of the war in Iran. “I’ve called for it within my people,” he said in response to a reporter’s question on the sidelines of the General Assembly about growing calls from Republican lawmakers for such a ban. “I’ve been talking about it.”
The national average price for diesel was $6.53 a gallon on Tuesday, up from $3.69 a year earlier, according to the AAA motor club.
Some Republican senators, including Charles E. Grassley of Iowa, have called for banning diesel exports to protect farmers, who use a lot of the fuel to run tractors and other equipment. But the oil industry and its supporters in Congress oppose a ban.
Iran’s foreign minister, Abbas Araghchi, met with Steve Witkoff, the U.S. special envoy, and Jared Kushner, President Trump’s son-in-law, on the sidelines of the General Assembly at the U.N. headquarters in New York, according to two Iranian officials. The meeting was mediated by Pakistan and Qatar, which had been pushing hard for Tehran and Washington to return to diplomacy and de-escalate the confict, the sources said. The discussions focused on a pathway for a deal, they said.
President Volodymyr Zelensky of Ukraine told reporters during his sideline meeting with Trump on Tuesday that he hoped Ukraine’s war with Russia would end “before winter” and that the Trump administration would help the country end the conflict.
Trump, later in the same meeting, said he believed President Vladimir Putin of Russia was willing to have a meeting with Zelensky. “He’ll meet,” Trump said of the Russian leader. “He’s willing to meet. He wants to see the war end.”
Putin and Zelensky have not met face-to-face for seven years, and the war sparked by Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine is now more than four years old.
Macron makes a case for a European role in the development of artificial intelligence, saying it should not be dictated by the United States and China. He says a lack of regulation of A.I. is a threat to the future of young people, harming them emotionally and hobbling their education. Macron called for the creation of an “open source A.I. model.”
Macron calls for global trade to be more effective and equitable, a theme France pushed at the Group of 7 summit in France in June. But he does not mention President Trump’s tariffs against the European Union, which have hurt French wine and other exports.
Macron led a push to recognize the state of Palestine at the U.N. last year, and on Tuesday he condemned human rights abuses by Jewish settlers against Palestinians in the West Bank. He also called for the sovereignty of Israel’s neighbor, Lebanon, to be respected.
Macron, who steps down next May, is using his final General Assembly address as France’s president to call for the U.N. to live up to its founding ideals. He condemned a “double standard” in how the world treats the sovereignty of Western countries compared to that of countries in the Middle East and elsewhere.
Macron called for reform of the Security Council, on which France has a permanent seat. He said that the Council had been paralyzed in the face of violations of international law and that “we cannot accept this new order of impunity.”
President Emmanuel Macron of France began his address on a combative note, asking, “Do we want to live” in a world characterized by the “law of the jungle?” He rejected the concept, arguing that the United Nations put the nations of the world on an equal footing, and issued a call for multilateralism. “We will not yield to fatalism, to defeatism,” Macron said.
Trump also told reporters that he thought Ukraine, whose president he met with on Tuesday, would need to eventually make a deal with Russia. “We talk about it a lot, including with President Putin, and I think something is going to happen.” Trump described the Ukraine Army as “very good fighters” and said “they can be proud of themselves.”
President Trump told reporters at the United Nations that U.S. officials had met with Iranian officials on Tuesday in a “very good meeting” that lasted three hours. He said it had ended an hour ago, meaning after he said the United States would “annihilate” the Islamic republic if it did not strike a deal to end the war. “It’s potential greatness or obliteration” he said of the choice faced by Iran, adding that another meeting was scheduled “in the very near future.” He didn’t provide details on the content of the meeting.
President Alexander Stubb of Finland, in his speech to the General Assembly, called Russia’s war against Ukraine “unlawful, unjustified, and unprovoked.” But Stubb did not dwell on the issue, instead delivering broad statements in support of multilateralism and the rule of law.
Finland has strengthened its security posture amid the Ukraine war, including boosting defenses along its 830-mile-long border with Russia and, earlier this month, joining a France-led nuclear deterrence initiative.
President Volodymyr Zelensky of Ukraine said in a post on the messaging app Telegram that he was meeting with President Trump on the sidelines of the General Assembly in New York. Earlier, he met with Ursula von der Leyen, the president of the European Commission, and thanked the European Union for a $90 billion loan.
As the United Nations searches for its next leader, diplomats say there are key qualities they would like to see in the next secretary general. They seek someone who proactively puts the U.N. at the center of resolving global conflicts and enforces cost-cutting and reform.
The topic of who will succeed António Guterres when he steps down in December is expected to be hotly debated this week behind closed doors in diplomatic meetings during the annual U.N. General Assembly in New York. The conversations “will drive a lot of the candidates’ fortunes and separate contenders from pretenders,” said Daniel Forti, the head of U.N. affairs at the International Crisis Group.
Fact Check
President Trump praised his own domestic and foreign policy accomplishments in a speech Tuesday morning before the United Nations General Assembly, repeatedly making remarks rife with falsehoods and exaggerations.
Here’s a fact-check.
Japan’s leader, Sanae Takaichi, met with President Trump on the sidelines of the General Assembly on Tuesday. She will address the gathering later in the day, and is expected to promote Japan’s aim to play a more active global role in defense and economic matters.
President Volodymyr Zelensky of Ukraine is expected to meet shortly with President Trump on the sidelines of the General Assembly. The two spoke by phone over the weekend, amid efforts by the White House to revive negotiations to end the war in Ukraine. Zelensky has said that he planned to discuss “de-escalation proposals” with Trump in New York."
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