Trump tells UN he may sign deal with Iran after midterms, or ‘annihilate’ it instead

UNITED NATIONS — US President Donald Trump told the United Nations General Assembly on Tuesday that he has a “big decision to make” regarding the future of the ongoing conflict against Iran, but suggested that diplomacy would be the way forward and that a deal could be inked in the coming months.

Much of the US president’s speech was focused on the war, while also touching on issues including the Gaza Strip and the ceasefire there, and the International Criminal Court, which his administration has hit with a pressure campaign.

Senior members of the Iranian delegation boycotted Trump’s address. A single lower-level diplomat remained in the plenum for the entirety of his remarks.

He opened his speech at the UN headquarters in New York by touting his decision to confront Iran, “the bully of the Middle East.”

“As president of the most extraordinary nation in history, I have no interest in leaving dangers to grow for another day. I do not believe in letting problems fester; they only become harder to solve. While others have talked, I have acted,” Trump said. “There is no better example of a danger that is allowed to gather strength at the world’s peril than the number one sponsor of terror, the Islamic Republic of Iran.”

“They were the bully of the Middle East, but they are the bully no more,” he added.

Trump told the UN that he has “a big decision to make” regarding what comes next — a diplomatic solution or fresh fighting.

“Will a deal be made with Iran that lets them rebuild and create a far greater country than it ever was before?” he asked rhetorically. “Or do I annihilate the Islamic Republic and do it quickly, never giving them a chance to kill and destroy people and countries again?”

“I believe we’ll make a deal right after the election,” he claimed, referring to the upcoming US midterms scheduled for November.

The US president recalled having long pledged to prevent Iran from obtaining a nuclear weapon, and reiterated his commitment to that goal, but noted that he still offered to negotiate a diplomatic solution to the problem upon taking office last year.

“They absolutely refused. That was a big mistake,” he said, adding that the response led to his decision to strike three of Iran’s nuclear sites in June 2025, during Israel’s previous, 12-day war with Tehran.

Those strikes, he claimed, “obliterated” Iran’s nuclear program, even though Tehran still has other enrichment sites and a stockpile of highly enriched uranium that can be used in a nuclear weapon.

Trump lamented that Iran refused to make a deal after the June strikes and instead began building a “vast missile and drone stockpile that threatened the security of every American service member in the region and everyone else in the region.”

“They also made a missile that was capable of hitting Europe, and they were very proud of it. I hope the Europeans realized that,” he said, in an apparent knock at what he has claimed has been Europe’s insufficient response to Iranian aggression.

“Iran’s goal was to complete their mad dash to a nuclear bomb from behind this conventional ballistic missile shield,” Trump said, adding that if it had succeeded, Tehran “would have been free to spread terror and death forever.”

Touting US success against Iran, without mentioning Israel

In making his case against Iran, Trump sought to tie the US’s campaign against the Islamic Republic to both the Hamas-led October 7, 2023, attack in southern Israel and to the September 11, 2001, attacks in the US.

“In America, we just marked the 25th anniversary of the worst terror attack in history, September 11, which killed 3,000 people, just a few miles from here. It’s an unbelievably terrible time,” Trump noted. “In two weeks, we will mark the third anniversary of the October 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 — tiny, beautiful babies.”

“Iran’s supreme leader celebrated that massacre and called it a service to humanity,” he said.

“After giving Iran every chance for a deal, I took action to ensure that neither the United States nor any nation [represented] in this hall would ever have to face such a nightmare,” Trump said, referring to the launch of Operation Epic Fury against Iran in February.

He made no mention of Israel’s role in the war.

‘With courage and resolve, anything is possible’

Trump repeated his claim that the US had succeeded in destroying Iran’s navy, its air force, its radar, its anti-aircraft equipment and said that Tehran’s “missiles and drone manufacturing capacity is almost gone” — an acknowledgment that Washington has fallen short of what many of its officials claimed was a key war aim.

He lamented Tehran’s decision to continue targeting ships in the Strait of Hormuz but still touted the devastation to Iran’s economy, which is plagued by ever-rising inflation, and said that despite Tehran’s efforts, the US was still managing to escort ships out of the crucial waterway on a daily basis.

He urged other countries to join the US in its economic measures against Iran, insisting that if leaders “stand united, we will soon see a world free of the last 51-year menace of Iranian terror and oil prices will come plummeting down, even lower than they were at the start of the conflict.”

“With courage and resolve, anything is possible. Big changes can happen and happen fast,” Trump insisted.

Calls for member states to withdraw from ‘rogue’ ICC

The fight against Iran was not the only fnearea in which Trump requested cooperation, as he turned his focus to the International Criminal Court and called for all member states to withdraw from the “rogue institution.”

The US imposed sanctions on the ICC both over the arrest warrants issued against Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and his former defense minister, and for a past probe into the conduct of US soldiers in Afghanistan.

“We will never allow US service members or anyone else to be investigated or given show trials by an anti-American tribunal with no jurisdiction over us,” Trump insisted, again without making any mention of Israel.

Reuters reported on Monday that the Trump administration has prepared sanctions against the entire ICC and plans to announce them soon. Previous US sanctions have targeted individual court officials rather than the entire ICC.

A year on, Trump lauds Gaza ceasefire deal

Trump also dedicated a portion of his General Assembly address to the ceasefire and hostage deal brokered by the US between Israel and Hamas in October 2025, and the establishment of the Board of Peace, which is tasked with overseeing the postwar rebuild of the Strip.

“One year ago, when I addressed the great leaders in this hall, the war in Gaza was still raging brutally. The hostages were still deep in Hamas tunnels, and there was no end in sight,” he said. “But here on the sidelines of the General Assembly, we took the first steps. It changed everything.”

During last year’s General Assembly, Trump held a meeting with the leaders of Arab and Muslim countries in which he secured their support for his plan to end the Gaza war.

“A few weeks later, we ended the war in Gaza, saving untold thousands of lives. We also brought home all remaining hostages — both living and dead, every single one of them,” he continued, thanking the UN Security Council for subsequently endorsing his 20-point plan for rehabilitating the Gaza Strip and granting a mandate to his newly formed Board of Peace to oversee the Gaza rebuild.

That plan has struggled to get off the ground — first amid Hamas’s refusal to accept the Board of Peace’s disarmament plan. Hamas accepted the proposal on July 30, but it has since stalled amid Israeli insistence that the initiative isn’t sufficient.

Trump thanked the 30 countries that have agreed to join the board, giving specific shout-outs to Morocco, Bahrain, Qatar, Kuwait, Kazakhstan, Saudi Arabia, Turkey and Uzbekistan, which have agreed to contribute billions of dollars toward Gaza’s reconstruction. The vast majority of those funds have not yet been transferred.

He also thanked Indonesia, Morocco, Albania, Kosovo and Kazakhstan for agreeing to contribute troops to the Board of Peace’s International Stabilization Force, which will be tasked with phasing out the IDF from Gaza and securing the Strip’s borders, and Egypt and Jordan for agreeing to help train members of the new Palestinian police force for Gaza.

He, again, made no mention of Israel in this portion of his speech, meaning that throughout his 38-minute address, the US president mentioned Israel just once. He did not mention Netanyahu at all.

Jordan, Turkey fume over Israel’s conduct in region

Where Trump held back, others were determined to make Israel the topic of their General Assembly speeches.

Jordan’s King Abdullah, in his remarks, warned that Israel’s military presence and activities in southern Syria risked threatening Jordan directly.

“This Israeli government’s expansionist appetite is now a regional threat, and today Syria is the warning the international community is choosing not to see,” he said. “For Jordan, there is no ambiguity. Any threat to our northern border, or our water security, is a threat to our national security.”

Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan also dedicated a portion of his speech to Israel and its “acts of state terror” against Palestinians in Gaza.

The Gaza Strip, he declared, has become “the most inhumane and shameful concentration camp of our time.”

Erdogan also accused Israel of refusing to advance the second stage of Trump’s Gaza ceasefire agreement, fumed that the West Bank is experiencing severe settler “violence and terror,” and asserted that Muslims and Christians are being denied access to holy sites in Jerusalem.

“We are faced with a genocidal mindset that can never get enough of killing,” he said of Israel, insisting no one with “moral consciousness” can ignore the issue, to which parts of the assembly responded with several seconds of applause.

Israel’s delegation at the UN left during Erdogan’s speech.

French President Emmanuel Macron said the situation in conflict-devastated Gaza is a “spectacle that shames us all,” as he gave his last speech as France’s leader to the UN’s showpiece diplomatic week.

“What is our credibility worth if we remain inactive on Gaza? Some claim that peace has been achieved, but this has not opened up humanitarian deliveries. It is a spectacle that shames us all,” he said.

Macron also took a swipe at increased settler violence in the West Bank, saying it is removing the legitimate rights of the Palestinian people to exist.

Nava Freiberg contributed to this report.