This morning, President Trump gave his planned address to the United Nations General Assembly.

The focus of his speech was Iran, but the president did talk about other international issues, including AI development. But Trump wouldn’t be Trump if he didn’t troll the media first.
https://twitter.com/nicksortor/status/2102393593973354512
This is the sixth speech that Trump has given to the UN during his time as president, and this one delivered a warning to both the Iranian regime, and the rest of the world in regards to Iran.

President Donald Trump issued a stern warning Tuesday for Iran to make a deal soon or face severe consequences for its pursuit of a nuclear weapon.

“I have a big decision to make: 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?” Trump told the United Nations General Assembly in his morning address.

“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?”

Trump expressed hope that a deal with the “cowards and traitors” of Iran will come “right after the election, because it doesn’t make sense for them not to.”

“They’re waiting to see how I do in the midterm election,” he continued. “What they don’t realize is that I’m not running.”

The midterm election result “doesn’t even enter my mind,” Trump stressed, adding “the only thing that does is that Iran will never have a nuclear weapon.”

Not acting now against the threat of a nuclear Iran would ultimately leave “unfinished business” and “intractable challenges” for the future.

Trump took pointed aim at Iran amid the conflict that has roiled the Strait of Hormuz and global oil supply lines, denouncing “brazen acts of terrorism against civilian ships.”

“I hope the Europeans realize that Iran’s goal was to complete their mad dash to a nuclear bomb from behind this conventional ballistic missile shield,” he said. “If they had succeeded, that wicked regime would have been free to spread terror and death forever, knowing that any attempt to stop them would face an arsenal of nuclear annihilation.”

President Trump is correct that a nuclear Iran would have been a threat to the entire world, not just the Middle East. The European countries, who knew Iran was a threat, should not get to bitch and moan when Trump actually acts to stop the Islamic regime from developing a nuclear bomb. But the president wasn’t done rebuking the hubris of the UN itself, and all their insidious little bureaucracies.

Trump blasted the concept of the UN as a “global government” while attacking various agencies of the New York-based organization.

“Last year, my administration was forced to intervene to stop an obscure UN body, the International Maritime Organization, from secretly establishing a first-ever global carbon tax, [a] very expensive tax, to raise international shipping costs by 10 to 20%, and maybe more than that,” he said.

“There is no global government, and while I’m president, there will be no global taxes.”

“The United States is equally opposed to the out-of-control institution known as the International Criminal Court,” he said in defense of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.

“We will never allow US service members or anyone else to be investigated or given show trials by an anti-American tribunal with no jurisdiction over us. What an evil group of people. I call on all nations that are members of the ICC to officially resign from this rogue institution immediately.”

Trump went on to blast “the craven hypocrites of the Human Rights Council,” whom he said “have little to say about the persecution of Christians — I mean, Christians are being persecuted all over the world. It’s not even believable.”

He then ridiculed the UNESCO cultural association, from which the US withdrew last year.

“It is deeply ironic that the United Nations has an entire institution, the UNESCO group of people and countries devoted to protecting cultural heritage. Yet, with their ceaseless promotion of mass migration, these globalists are actively destroying the greatest cultures and most extraordinary heritage in all of history,” Trump said.

“There is no human right to illegal immigration, but there is a right to remain a sovereign nation.”

Hey Spain, that was directed to YOU. And the United Kingdom. And France.

And President Trump affirmed his support for the development of AI.

Trump also responded to earlier speakers who called for restrictions on artificial intelligence, saying the US “totally rejects any attempt to construct a globalist scheme to control for the artificial intelligence being spoken of so much now.

“I’m not going to stifle growth of something that will be bigger than the industrial revolution,” the president said. “Many say bigger than the industrial revolution or the internet itself. And we will be very careful.”

Trump promised his Justice Department will “watch it closely,” along with “other law enforcement bodies that will rein things in if we have to do that.”

“But we will only encourage superintelligence. We’re going to encourage it, not rein it in,” he added, after resisting mounting calls for regulation by congressional Democrats.

“Americans have never been a nation that retreats from a frontier or shrinks from a challenge.”

There were no big surprises in the president’s speech. He was expected to talk about Iran, and given the reports that the country’s GDP has shrunk by ten percent thanks to the war and economic sanctions (with huge hits to the oil industry), the regime is well on its way to a complete financial disaster. The only thing keeping them afloat is pride and inflation. The midterm elections are still six weeks away, and a new Congress won’t be sworn in until next January. Does Iran really think they can hold out under these circumstances for four more months without their civilian population cracking under the stress, if not rising up against them? And are they certain that a new Congress will lift sanctions? There are a lot of very big “ifs” there.

Honestly, it would be to President Trump’s benefit to, as he says, “annihilate” them now, before the midterms, and wrap this up. The fact that he does not speaks to his desire for peace – but not at any cost. President Trump wants a deal, but given how the “memorandum of understanding” (which the Iranians claim they now want again) turned out, one can only hope that the president has learned that there have been no promises that the Iranian regime has kept.

Featured image: President Trump at the United Nations in 2018, official White House photo by Andrea Hanks, cropped, public domain