Trump Repeats Iran ‘Annihilation’ Threat — in Front of Tehran’s Rep at the U.N.
President Donald Trump used his speech at the United Nations General Assembly on Tuesday morning to once again threaten Iran with annihilation if the regime doesn’t agree to abandon their nuclear ambitions and open up commercial traffic in the Strait of Hormuz.
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Trump has repeatedly threatened to step up military operations in Iran in response to Tehran’s refusal to accept U.S. peace terms. Most of those threats have been leveled on social media; on Tuesday, Trump openly threatened a U.N. member country at the organization’s headquarters in Manhattan. One member of Iran’s delegation looked on as Trump floated the possibility of destroying his country.
“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 said.
He added, “Do I drive them into hell with no chance of survival and no hope of future greatness or generations?”
Several shaky ceasefires have been brokered and unraveled since the U.S. and Israel launched strikes on the country on February 28. In the last week, Iran has continued targeting commercial oil tankers in the strait.
Threats of escalating U.S.-led destruction have accompanied the ceasefires’ deterioration.
In April, Trump posted to Truth Social, “A whole civilization will die tonight, never to be brought back again. I don’t want that to happen, but it probably will.”
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Months later in July, Trump posted again, saying the U.S. had 1,000 missiles “locked and loaded and aimed at the Islamic Republic of Iran.” If Iran assassinated the sitting president, Trump wrote, the U.S. military would “completely decimate and destroy all areas of Iran.”
During his U.N. address, Trump predicted that his administration will finally reach a deal with Iran after the midterm elections in November and suggested that the regime was waiting on the election results to evaluate his domestic political standing before agreeing to a deal.
“I believe we’ll make a deal right after the election because it doesn’t make sense for them not to,” Trump said. “They’re waiting to see how I do in the midterm election.”
In making the case for his decision to attack Iran, Trump reminded the assembled delegates that Iran has used its considerable resources to destabilize the Middle East through savage terror attacks.
“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. … In two weeks, we will mark the third anniversary of the October 7th attack in Israel, where terrorists funded by Iran tortured, mutilated, and killed 1,200 very innocent civilians, including dozens of Americans and many babies,” Trump said.
He continued, “For 51 years, the fanatical Iranian regime has ruled by bloodshed and mass murder, spreading death and carnage and chaos across the entire Middle East and beyond. They were the bully of the Middle East, but they are the bully no more. … I will never allow Iran to have a nuclear weapon.”
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