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Trump Threatens to ‘Annihilate’ Iran in U.N. Speech

12 0
22.09.2026

Welcome back to World Brief, where we’re looking at U.S. President Donald Trump’s speech at the United Nations General Assembly, an expanded U.S. military presence in Greenland, and the European Union’s initial free-trade deal with the Philippines.

War Crimes at the U.N.?

U.S. President Donald Trump presented a damning choice during his United Nations General Assembly (UNGA) speech on Tuesday: Make a deal with Iran that “lets them rebuild” or “annihilate” the Islamic Republic. “Do I drive them into hell with no chance of survival and no hope of future greatness or generations?” Trump posed, echoing past threats that experts have argued could be considered war crimes.

Welcome back to World Brief, where we’re looking at U.S. President Donald Trump’s speech at the United Nations General Assembly, an expanded U.S. military presence in Greenland, and the European Union’s initial free-trade deal with the Philippines.

War Crimes at the U.N.?

U.S. President Donald Trump presented a damning choice during his United Nations General Assembly (UNGA) speech on Tuesday: Make a deal with Iran that “lets them rebuild” or “annihilate” the Islamic Republic. “Do I drive them into hell with no chance of survival and no hope of future greatness or generations?” Trump posed, echoing past threats that experts have argued could be considered war crimes.

Although Trump’s warnings are not new, using the U.N. stage to deliver them brings a new dimension to the White House’s continued war of words against the institution’s human rights work.

The Trump administration has repeatedly denounced the U.N.’s justice-seeking bodies. Last Thursday, the White House rejected a U.N. fact-finding mission that found “reasonable grounds to believe” that the U.S. military committed war crimes when it launched separate strikes on an Iranian school and sports facility in February. And on Tuesday, he called the U.N. Human Rights Council “craven hypocrites” for its alleged failure to speak up against the persecution of Christians.

But he saved his toughest rhetoric for the U.N.-allied International Criminal Court (ICC). “You’re an evil group of people,” Trump said. He called on all ICC member countries to immediately resign from the “rogue institution,” which he claimed is an “anti-American,” “out-of-control”........

© Foreign Policy