Trump says Iran faces deal or annihilation

President Donald Trump told the United Nations General Assembly that Iran faces a choice between a peace deal and potential destruction, then said U.S. officials held a “very good” three-hour meeting with Iranian representatives on the sidelines of the gathering in New York.

Speaking Tuesday to a standing-room-only audience, Trump said he faced a “big decision” on whether to strike Iran again or pursue an agreement. A single member of Iran’s delegation watched as he warned that the United States could “annihilate” the Islamic Republic if the conflict remained unresolved.

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

Later, Trump told reporters that American officials had held a “very good” and “very productive” three-hour meeting with Iranian leaders. Al Jazeera reported that U.S. envoys Steve Witkoff and Jared Kushner, who have led negotiations with Iran, took part in the talks. Witkoff, standing with Trump, also described the meeting as “very good” but gave no details. Trump said another meeting was scheduled “in the very near future.”

Iranian state TV confirmed that Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi met Witkoff, the BBC reported, though officials in Tehran did not immediately comment.

Trump suggested in his UN speech that an agreement with Iran could come after November’s U.S. congressional elections, saying Iran was “waiting to see” how Republicans fare against Democrats. “What they don’t realise is that I’m not running. I did that already – and won in a landslide,” he said, according to Al Jazeera. “And I’ll be here for two-and-a-half years.” He added: “The only thing that does is that Iran will never have a nuclear weapon.”

The president’s remarks came during a day of high-level diplomacy at the United Nations, with wars in the Middle East and Ukraine testing his foreign policy agenda. Trump defended the war with Iran, which the BBC reported has raised global oil prices and weighed on his approval ratings since the U.S. and Israel launched military action in February. He argued the conflict had kept Tehran from obtaining a nuclear weapon and showed the value of “peace through strength.”

Trump also said his diplomacy would end Russia’s war in Ukraine. “We’re working very closely with the leaders of Russia and Ukraine, and we will get that one done,” he said. “It’s going to happen, I think, more quickly than people understand.”

His address contrasted with remarks by UN Secretary General António Guterres, who warned that global divisions were deepening. “The fault lines in our world are widening,” Guterres said, citing geopolitical rivalries, wars, climate change and artificial intelligence.

Trump sharply criticized international institutions, accusing the UN of advancing a “far-left agenda of globalist bureaucrats who nobody ever elected.” He emphasized national sovereignty and U.S. military power. “There is no global government,” he said.

He also vowed that the United States would not fall behind China in artificial intelligence, saying AI should be called “super intelligence” instead. “The use of the word artificial makes it sound fake,” he said. “It’s not fake, it’s actually amazing. But we have to be careful.”

On the sidelines, Trump signed an agreement with the leaders of Denmark and Greenland to expand the U.S. military presence on the North Atlantic island, the BBC reported. The deal reaffirms Greenland’s sovereignty as an autonomous territory of Denmark while granting the United States broad access to its airspace and territory.