Donald Trump has a habit of discomfiting delegates to the United Nations general assembly. But this year, he may have upstaged the ghost of former Soviet leader Nikita Khrushchev by openly contemplating the annihilation of a fellow UN member state. Eleven minutes into a 40-minute address, the US president announced he had “a big decision to make” over Iran, which has staged a much more determined resistance than Trump anticipated when he decided to go to war against the country in February.
Do I drive them into hell with no chance of survival and no hope of future greatness or generations?” Possibly not since Khrushchev, the late Soviet leader, brandished his shoe and allegedly banged it on a desk in 1960 in protest at a fellow delegate’s speech has the annual gathering witnessed such a display of bellicosity from a superpower leader. The world may have become inured to Trump’s dire threats to send Iran “to the stone age” or end its civilization – so often have they been issued, only to sometimes be followed by a ceasefire or negotiations. But hearing them voiced in a forum created in the aftermath of the second world war, with the explicit aim of preventing future conflicts, was disconcerting.
Iran was the focal point of much of Trump’s speech, which began with a catalogue of familiar boasts of his supposed achievements that seemed better fitted to a domestic audience. Whether or not the latest threat should be taken literally, little of what he said about Iran seemed reassuring. He appeared to play fast and loose with the facts, consciously or otherwise.
The US president twice incorrectly asserted that the theocratic regime had held power for 51 years. In fact, the Islamic revolution that toppled the pro-western former Shah, Mohammad Reza Pahlavi, and installed the current regime happened 47 years ago, in 1979. Trump also cited apparently inflated figures for the number of Iranians killed in anti-government protests last January, weeks before the war.
No definitive death toll has been established. But previous estimates of people killed in the brutal crushing of January’s demonstrations – even including those previously stated by Trump himself – have been much lower. The ominous rhetoric was not limited to Iran.
Members of the Cuban delegation were seen leaving the hall as he predicted the imminent collapse of the country’s communist regime, which has been struggling to cope with a food security and humanitarian crisis amid tightening US embargoes. He’s deep into negotiations with Cuba. Let’s see what happens.” US actions in Venezuela, where special forces last January seized the strongman president, Nicolás Maduro, and spirited him to New York to face drug-trafficking charges, was also cited as an ominous warning to other adversaries – as well as a vocal statement of how the administration would behave in Latin America, Washington’s supposed “back yard”, if it felt its interests threatened.
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