Addressing the 81st United Nations General Assembly on September 22, 2026, Trump told the hall he was weighing whether to destroy Iran. “But I have a big decision to make,” he said. “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? Do I drive them into hell with no chance of survival and no hope of future greatness or generations?” He had used the word twice in the previous five days, to Axios and to Fox News (see Trump Says He Has a 'Big Decision' on Iran: 'Do I Want to Go In and Annihilate Them or Do I Not?' and Trump on Iran: 'My Question Is, If and When Do I Blow the Entire Nation Up?'). This time he said it from the podium of the institution founded to prevent wars, about a member state, in the eighth month of a war he started.
He put the decision on an election timetable. “But I believe we'll make a deal right after the election, because it doesn't make sense for them not to,” he said. “They're waiting to see how I do in the midterm election. What they don't realize is that I'm not running. I did that already and won in a landslide.” His line that “Iran will never have a nuclear weapon” drew applause, according to NBC News and The Hill.
Iran's delegation left. The Associated Press reported that “Most of Iran's delegation walked out of the General Assembly chamber during Trump's speech.” Newsweek and ANI, citing Al Jazeera, put the walkout about ten minutes in and reported that a single Iranian delegate stayed in the hall; The Hill reported that “the UN's live stream of the address cut to a lone Iranian representative sitting in the chamber.” President Masoud Pezeshkian and Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi were in New York but not in the room. Later, when Trump said of Cuba that “It's an absolutely failed state. It's failing like never before, and it will fall,” the Cuban delegation walked out too. Richard Gowan of the International Crisis Group told Newsweek that such walkouts are “now quite routine.”
On the boat strikes, he described a policy of killing or holding people indefinitely: the cartels “should be killed, exiled, or detained as enemy combatants without the possibility of release, which is what we're doing.” He claimed the strikes had destroyed “97% of the drugs coming into the ocean and sea.” PolitiFact rated that False, noting that seizure figures “show how many drugs are stopped from entering the U.S., not how many drugs are being sent to the U.S. or how many make it in,” and that the Coast Guard recorded a 200% increase in seizures in fiscal 2025. He also said the United States has “more munitions than we could ever possibly even think of using,” which PolitiFact called misleading: stockpiles are “rapidly decreasing as the Iran war continues,” with interceptors needing three to four years to replenish (see New York Times: The Iran War Has Drained U.S. Weapons Stockpiles Below the Level Needed to Confront a Near-Peer Adversary, at a Cost Nearing $1 Billion a Day). NBC checked his claim that Iran's government “slaughtered over 72,000 of its citizens” and reported that estimates “don't approach the number cited by Trump,” with one rights group counting about 7,000.
Other passages set out policy. On artificial intelligence: “we will only encourage superintelligence. We're going to encourage it, not rein it in” (see Trump Says the Only Guardrail AI Needs Is a 'STRONG AND SMART (High IQ!) PRESIDENT' and Tells Critics to 'BEWARE'). On the International Criminal Court: “I call on all nations that are members of the ICC to officially resign from this rogue institution immediately.” On the United Nations: it “must stop imposing the far left agenda of globalist bureaucrats who nobody ever elected,” and “There is no global government. And while I'm president, there will be no global taxes.” He said he had “ended the war in Gaza”; NBC noted that more than 1,300 Palestinians, mostly civilians, have been killed since the October ceasefire, according to the Palestinian Health Ministry. On Venezuela he called the January operation “a war” and the oil “spoils,” a description his own officials had rejected at the time (see Trump Calls the January Venezuela Operation 'a War' and the Oil 'Spoils.' His Own Officials Had Told the UN and Congress It Was Law Enforcement.).
No American television pool camera was there. Trump had banned CNN, MS NOW and Politico from the White House four days earlier, and the five pool networks suspended their shared coverage rather than replace CNN (see Trump Bans CNN, MS NOW and Politico From the White House, and the Next Morning the Secret Service Took Their Reporters' Badges). The speech reached television through the United Nations' own feed. Before it, Trump told CNN's Kaitlan Collins, who was covering him on UN credentials, “You should not be here covering me. You said you weren't going to cover me.” Collins said on air that CNN had never said it would stop covering the president.
Hours after threatening annihilation, Trump said his administration had met Iran's delegation for about three hours. “It went very well. It was a very good meeting,” he told reporters, and described the same two options in blunter terms: “It's two choices. In one case, it's obliteration, and the other alternative is potential greatness. It could be a great country.” Asked whether Steve Witkoff and Jared Kushner had taken part, he said, “there's nothing to say. They had a very good meeting, a very productive meeting. And they have another one scheduled in the very near future.” Secretary of State Marco Rubio told the AP, “This is a president that will meet with anybody for the most part, because he believes that engaging with people is important if you're going to solve problems.”
The reaction from specialists was about the forum as much as the content. Maryam Jamshidi of the University of Colorado Law School said, “It's one thing to make genocidal threats against a nation on social media. It's another thing to do it from the podium of the UN.” Matt Duss of the Center for International Policy said the rhetoric “is not merely reckless, it is a criminal threat of genocide against an entire nation.” Both were quoted by the advocacy-leaning outlet Common Dreams, and both are named. No member of Congress was found on the record responding to the speech on the day. The UN's own transcript of the address is machine-generated and says it “isn't an official record”; every quotation above also appears in at least one news organization's independent rendering.
Update (September 23, 2026): Iran's president answered from the same podium the next day. Masoud Pezeshkian told the General Assembly that Trump “must know that the resistance of the Iranian people will only increase in the face of sanctions, increased pressure, increased bullying. We will never bow our head or bend the knee.” He said Iran is “ready for dialogue and diplomacy and negotiations without accepting the language of force,” set out a position on the nuclear question in one line, “no nuclear weapons and no limitations on peaceful nuclear technology,” and objected that “it cannot be the case that everyone benefits from the Strait of Hormuz while we are denied access to shipping through this waterway.” On Trump's description of his government he said: “The US president described us as terrorists. We have been the victims of terrorism.” On the strikes: “America and Israel attacked us, equipped with the latest technology and weapon systems, and our people stood steadfast … Yes, they did hit us, but we did not bend the knee, we did not bow our head.”
Rubio answered for the administration afterward: “I don't know what standing Iran has to lecture anyone on human rights or the international system when they habitually violate it. They violate the sovereignty of every one of their neighbors by sponsoring terrorist organizations that reside in the borders of those countries. They slaughter their own people.”
Trump also filled in, on the record, what he had declined to say the day before. Asked about the indirect contacts with Iranian officials on the sidelines, he had said there was “nothing to say.” He then told reporters that Steve Witkoff and Jared Kushner had met for about three hours with Iranian officials. “It was a very good meeting,” he said, adding that those present were “not the highest level, but it's something.” Rubio put it lower: “If there's an opportunity to exchange ideas and messages, we will. And that's what largely yesterday was … But ultimately, I don't want to mischaracterize this as a major breakthrough.” Iran's foreign ministry spokesman, Esmail Baqai, said the talks were “not anything new” and that Iran's conditions, including an end to the blockade and the release of frozen assets, had not changed.
One detail is reported but not settled. The New Republic and NBC both report that the sole United States representative in the chamber stood and walked out during the speech, in the passage about civilian deaths from American airstrikes in February; the BBC places the departure at the start of the address instead. The Associated Press, which had two reporters on the story, does not mention a walkout at all. No outlet names the person. The civilian death toll from those strikes is given differently by different outlets, so no single figure is used here.