In UN speech, Trump asks if he should ‘annihilate’ Iran

U.S. President Donald Trump told the U.N. General Assembly on Tuesday that he faces a choice between destroying the Iranian regime and making a deal with it.

“I have a big decision to make,” Trump told the 81st annual gathering of world leaders and diplomats in New York City. “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 asked. “Do I drive them into hell with no chance of survival and no hope of future greatness or generations?”

The president repeated his previous predictions that a deal to conclude the American conflict with Iran will happen sometime after the U.S. midterm elections.

He took credit for preventing Iran from acquiring a nuclear weapon.

“In two weeks, we will mark the third anniversary of the Oct. 7 attack in Israel, where terrorists funded by Iran tortured, mutilated and killed 1,200 very innocent civilians, including dozens of Americans and many babies—babies—little, tiny, beautiful babies,” Trump said. “Iran’s supreme leader celebrated that massacre and called it ‘a service to humanity.’”

“Just imagine if such a vile regime were ever empowered to carry out large-scale terror attacks from behind a nuclear shield,” he said.

The president denied that the war against Iran has caused a shortage in U.S. munitions stockpiles despite a U.S. Department of Defense inspector general report last week finding that the conflict “has resulted in strategic inventory shortfalls and revealed industrial base bottlenecks for munitions resupply.”

“We have more munitions than we could ever possibly even think of using,” Trump said at the United Nations.

Trump’s remarks on Iran were met with occasional interruptions of applause and a blank stare from the lone Iranian delegate in the room.

By tradition, the United States, as the U.N. host country, speaks second at the General Assembly, after Brazil.

Iranian President Masoud Pezeshkian is expected to address the assembly on Wednesday. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is slated to speak on Thursday. After the speech, Trump told reporters that U.S. officials negotiated with the Iranian delegation via “mediators” for three hours on the sidelines of the General Assembly. Trump indicated that his son-in-law, Jared Kushner, U.S. special envoy for peace missions, and Steve Witkoff, U.S. special envoy to the Middle East, attended what Trump said was a “very good meeting.”

Iranian state media reported that the regime’s foreign minister, Abbas Araghchi, represented the Iranian side.

The Islamic Republic was one of the main international focuses of Trump’s nearly-40-minute speech, which also touched on Gaza, the Western hemisphere and the president’s views on multilateral institutions.

He thanked countries like Qatar, Turkey and Saudi Arabia for supporting the Board of Peace that he established to stabilize and rebuild Gaza, saying that aid for Gaza was “desperately” needed.

Cuba’s delegation walked out of the room after Trump called the communist dictatorship a “failed state.”

“Communism will never be coming to America, but freedom will be coming to Cuba,” Trump said.

Trump touted cuts to the U.N. budget and called on every member state of the International Criminal Court to resign, calling it an “anti-American tribunal” and an “evil group of people.”

He also described the U.N. Human Rights Council as “craven hypocrites” for failing to address what he called the “persecution of Christians,” and slammed the U.N. Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization as “globalists,” who “are actively destroying the greatest cultures and most extraordinary heritage in all of history.”

The United States announced in 2025 that it was once again withdrawing from UNESCO after doing so during the first Trump administration. The second withdrawal will be completed in December.

Israel withdrew from UNESCO alongside the United States at the end of 2018 during Trump’s first term.

In line with his efforts to change the names of the Department of Defense, the Gulf of Mexico, the Kennedy Center and Lake Ontario, Trump proposed renaming “artificial intelligence” as “super intelligence,” which he said sounded “not fake.”

“From this point forward, all of the United States’ documents, and hopefully the world’s, will be changed to use the much more accurate term ‘super’ as opposed to ‘artificial,’” Trump said, of the technology. “Let’s see if I have any power. Maybe I do, and maybe I don’t.”

“We’re going to find out pretty soon,” he said.