President Donald J. Trump will take aim at Iran over its nuclear program and ambitions in the Middle East in his second address to the United Nations General Assembly on Tuesday.
The president—who threatened to “totally destroy” North Korea in his UN speech last year—is expected to employ a forceful tone toward the Islamic Republic, even if not as bellicose as he did toward Pyongyang.
His speech, scheduled for 10:15 a.m. in New York, will repeat last year’s theme of “sovereignty’’ as a paramount virtue for nations, according to several of his top foreign policy advisers. And as relations with North Korea have warmed over the past year, Iran has emerged as the principal antagonist in US foreign policy.
Trump has pulled the US out of a nuclear agreement with Iran while signing an agreement in principle with North Korea to abandon its nuclear program. His “maximum pressure’’ moniker—previously describing a series of global sanctions against North Korea—has now been fitted to the administration’s approach to Iran.
“We’ve imposed very stringent sanctions on Iran. More are coming,” National Security Adviser John Bolton told reporters on Monday at the UN General Assembly. “And what we expect from Iran is massive changes in their behavior. And until that happens, we will continue to exert what the president has called ‘maximum pressure.’”
‘Strong words’
On Wednesday Trump will host a UN Security Council session focused on the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction by Iran and other countries.
“You can bet the president will have well-deserved strong words for the Iranian regime, which is among the worst of violators of UN Security Council resolutions, if not the absolute worst in the world,” Secretary of State Mike Pompeo told reporters on Monday.
Trump has said he’s open to meeting with Iran’s leaders, but Iranian President Hassan Rouhani said in an interview with NBC News on Monday that Trump’s pressure campaign would not bring his government to the negotiating table. The US would have to first re-join the nuclear accord negotiated by Trump’s predecessor, Barack Obama, he said.
“That bridge must be rebuilt,” he said. Meanwhile, Iran can withstand US sanctions, he said, calling the Trump administration’s threats to choke off his country’s oil exports an “empty promise.”
“The United States is not capable of bringing our oil exports to zero,” Rouhani told NBC.
In addition to Trump’s speech and the Security Council session, Bolton and Pompeo will address an event on Tuesday afternoon organized by a group called United Against a Nuclear Iran. The State Department will host an event Friday morning to “call for supporting human rights in Iran,” featuring former Iranian political prisoners and several Trump administration officials.
Less bellicose
While Iran may be on the receiving end of many of Trump’s verbal barbs on Tuesday, it’s unlikely that his speech will be as abrasive as the 2017 address, when he branded North Korea’s Kim Jong Un “Rocket Man’’ and threatened to annihilate the country, said Jon Alterman, director of the Middle East program at the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington.
Since that address, Trump has claimed credit for an easing of tensions between the US and North Korea, which hasn’t tested ballistic missiles or nuclear weapons since late last year. Trump and Kim have both said that they’re eager for a second summit.
Alterman predicted “much less bomb-throwing than there was last year” in a briefing for reporters. “I don’t think you’re going to see the ‘little rocket man’ kind of attacks. You will see a clear assertion of US views.”
Trump will spend much of the speech laying out his “America First” world view, including his assertion that all world leaders should put their countries first as sovereign nations. He has framed his decision to pull out of the Iran deal—which retains the support of several US allies and the imprimatur of a UN Security Council resolution—as an issue of US sovereignty.
Trump used some form of the word “sovereign” more than 20 times during his UN address last year, and will likely return to the theme repeatedly on Tuesday, aides said. In the past year, he has moved to limit the US role in multilateral institutions, pulling the country from the United Nations Human Rights Council and the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization. He’s levied tariffs on several US trading partners, threatened to withdraw from the World Trade Organization and warned the International Criminal Court that its officials would be sanctioned if it prosecutes Americans.
That particular body, Bolton said on Monday, is “dead to us.”
Image credits: AP/Tyler Evert