Trump Tells the UN He Might Have to “Annihilate” Iran. His Own Envoys Were Down the Hall Calling the Talks “Very Good.”
Addressing the General Assembly this week, Donald Trump framed the future of a nation of ninety million people as a coin he hasn’t finished flipping. “Will a deal be made with Iran that lets them rebuild and create a far greater country than it ever was before,” he said, “or do I annihilate the Islamic Republic, and do it quickly?” Iran’s Armed Forces had an answer ready before the applause died down: the threat, they said, was “a tool for domestic propaganda” and proof of nothing but “strategic desperation.” Given what else happened in the building that same week, it’s hard to say they’re wrong.
A Big Decision, Scheduled for Later
Trump also called Iran the “number one sponsor of terror” and “the bully of the Middle East, but they are the bully no more,” which is the kind of line that plays well in a hall and terribly on a timeline, because while he was delivering it, his envoys Steve Witkoff and Jared Kushner were spending three hours with Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi in a room somewhere else in the same city. Trump himself described the session as “very good,” with “a lot of momentum” toward an actual agreement.
He was also careful to insist the timing had nothing to do with the American midterms, even while explaining exactly how it did: he accused Tehran of stalling “to see how I do in the midterm election,” said he’d “give absolutely no credence” to that calculation, and then predicted a deal would land after the midterms anyway. “Anything could happen with me,” he added, which is either a threat or a scheduling note, and possibly both.
Propaganda, Diagnosed by the Propaganda Department
Iran’s own read on the speech came from the General Staff of the Armed Forces, who said the rhetoric “reflects the strategic impasse facing the United States” and was really an attempt to paper over what they called humiliating setbacks in the broader regional fight. President Masoud Pezeshkian, freshly landed in New York, promised to bring the world “the message of a strong and invincible Iran,” which is the exact same genre of speech from the exact opposite podium.
Washington, for its part, let new sanctions on Iran’s aviation sector take effect the same week as the “very good” talks, which is either pressure to strengthen Witkoff’s hand at the table or a signal that nobody in this negotiation fully trusts the other’s public statements, including, it increasingly seems, their own.
The Rhetoric Outpaced the Room
None of this is happening in the abstract. The war between the United States, Israel and Iran that began in February is, as of this week, on day 207, and the domestic audience both leaders were really performing for is not especially impressed by any of it: recent polling puts disapproval of Trump’s handling of the conflict at 71 percent, with 76 percent saying the war hasn’t been worth its cost. Oil traders, who tend to price in actual risk rather than actual rhetoric, watched Trump talk about annihilation and Iran talk about desperation, and sent crude below $100 a barrel anyway.
Two governments, each accusing the other of performing for the cameras, delivered their accusations directly into the cameras. The only audience that seems to have stopped watching the show is the one paying for the tickets.
The world, translated into human language.