Iranian President Masoud Pezeshkian’s sharp rebuke of Washington at the United Nations would have drawn little more than a "smirk" from President Donald Trump, who knows he "holds the cards," a foreign policy expert told Fox News Digital on Wednesday. The assessment came after Pezeshkian and Trump addressed the U.N. General Assembly in New York from the same podium within 24 hours of each other, trading sharp rhetoric as tensions between Washington and Tehran continue to mount.
"Trump understands he holds the cards, and he may not even have paid much attention to what the Iranian president was saying," Behnam Ben Taleblu, a senior fellow at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies (FDD), told Fox News Digital. Pezeshkian accused the United States and Israel of attacking Iran while portraying his country as the victim of aggression. THE TOP MOMENTS FROM IRAN PRESIDENT’S TENSE VISIT TO US SOIL AS WAR RAGES "We have only defended ourselves.
We are not terrorists," Pezeshkian claimed. "Our innocent people have been the targets of cowardly attacks and aggressions imposed upon our country. America and Israel attacked us," he said.
"I’m sure that would have drawn a smirk or a smile or a chuckle from the president’s face, seeing that crassness," Taleblu said, pointing to what he described as a sharp contrast between Pezeshkian’s rhetoric and the Iranian government’s track record. Pezeshkian’s address came after Trump used the same U.N. stage to defend the U.S. conflict with Iran and warn that Tehran faced a stark choice between reaching a deal and facing further destruction. "Or do I annihilate the Islamic Republic, and do it quickly, never giving them a chance to kill and destroy people and countries again?" Trump said on Tuesday.
While the rhetoric from both leaders was pointed, Taleblu said their broader diplomatic positions remain largely predictable. TRUMP TO ZERO-IN ON IRAN NUCLEAR THREAT, GAZA PLAN AND UN OVERHAUL IN WORLD STAGE SPEECH "To a certain degree, both President Trump and President Pezeshkian’s speeches before the U.N. General Assembly’s 81st session were predictable," Taleblu said.
"Predictable because the status of both countries and their foreign policy toward the other are in a fairly predictable pattern right now," he added, Despite the threats and recriminations, the two adversaries also appear to be still testing a diplomatic path behind the scenes. Trump said Tuesday that U.S. special envoy Steve Witkoff and Jared Kushner spoke with Iranian officials for roughly three hours on the sidelines of the General Assembly and characterized the discussions as productive. Witkoff later said the talks were conducted through mediators who shuttled between the U.S. and Iranian delegations.
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