Four BBC correspondents parse Trump's wide-ranging UN address

Trump threatens Iran ‘annihilation’; Cuban delegation walks out

Four BBC correspondents — North America editor Sarah Smith, White House reporter Bernd Debusmann Jr, BBC Persian correspondent Khashayar Joneidi, in Washington, and New York correspondent Nada Tawfik, at the UN — picked five key moments from President Donald Trump’s address to the United Nations General Assembly on Tuesday, characterizing the lengthy speech as a self-styled peacemaker’s platform paired with pointed threats to adversaries.

Smith, reporting from the assembly hall, said Trump has “no great respect for the United Nations” — he accused it of imposing a “far-left agenda” — but “does relish the global platform it gives him.” He used Tuesday’s speech to tout his achievements and claim the mantle of a peacemaker while issuing a number of pointed threats: Iran might be annihilated, lethal strikes on small boats suspected of drug smuggling would continue, and the Cuban regime might even be toppled. The clear message, Smith wrote, was that “America is still prepared to use its military might wherever Trump thinks it might be required to secure its national interests.”

Trump said he was “reasserting American power” and flexed what he called the country’s “unmatched military might.” “The United States will no longer permit threats to America to gain a foothold anywhere in the Western Hemisphere,” Trump said. The speech marked, the BBC reported, “the full-throated assertion to the world of ‘America First.’”

On Iran, Trump presented a stark choice: reach an agreement with Washington and rebuild the country, or face the rapid “annihilation” of the Islamic Republic. He again predicted that a deal to end the war would probably follow the US midterm elections in November. Joneidi, writing from Washington, identified the remarks as illustrating Trump’s “familiar strategy of coercive diplomacy — keeping negotiations open while also threatening overwhelming force.” Trump’s language, Joneidi added, “blurred the distinction between destroying the political system and threatening Iran itself.”

The BBC noted that international law experts had previously expressed concern at what they called “alarming rhetoric” by US officials, including a Trump social media post that the US might “obliterate” Iran’s power plants. Tuesday’s references to leaving Iran “no chance of survival” and “no hope” for future generations “will likely have stoked similar alarm,” the BBC reported. “There is also an irony in delivering this warning at the United Nations, an organisation founded to save future generations from war,” the BBC wrote. Yet the speech “was not a declaration that diplomacy has failed,” the BBC added; it was “an attempt to define the terms of possible negotiations: the US remains prepared to make a deal, but only under the shadow of an existential threat.”

Debusmann reported that Trump called Cuba “an absolutely failed state” and said his administration has been pursuing “a fundamental change in the situation in Cuba.” “It will fall,” Trump said. Over the past year, the US president has become more vocal in criticizing Cuba’s communist government, Debusmann wrote; on Tuesday he said Cuba was under “enormous pressure” and “failing like never before.” The US, the BBC reported, has not provided a detailed picture of what it believes change will look like in Cuba.

The Cuban delegation walked out of the hall as Trump continued his remarks. Cuba’s Foreign Minister Bruno Rodriguez reacted on X, accusing Trump of spreading “falsehoods.” “The US government is incapable of accepting that Cuba is and has the right to be a full sovereign and independent country,” Rodriguez wrote.

Trump also used the address to praise a new deal on Greenland under which the US will build two military bases in the Arctic territory. “We will have the complete ability to do what is necessary to defend the American continent and also Europe,” Trump said, calling the deal something that “very much enhances” the defense alliance NATO. The United States, Denmark and Greenland held a joint signing ceremony at the UN shortly after the address, the BBC reported. Greenland is a semi-autonomous territory, and part of the Kingdom of Denmark, which primarily handles its foreign policy. Trump first announced the deal on Friday.

Trump administration officials are hailing the agreement as enhancing US security at minimal cost and with relationships intact, the BBC reported. Denmark and Greenland’s governments, the BBC added, “will be hoping it ends the long-simmering disagreement that began when Trump threatened to take Greenland by force” — a threat that “shook the NATO alliance and sorely tested the US-Danish relationship.” Few clear details about the nature of the deal have been confirmed publicly, and given that Trump had tried for months to purchase or annex the semi-autonomous territory, “some analysts are viewing it as a quiet win for diplomacy,” the BBC reported.

In another section of the speech, Trump rebranded artificial intelligence as “super intelligence,” or SI. “The use of the word artificial makes it sound fake,” Trump said. “It’s not fake, it’s actually amazing. But we have to be careful.” “Welcome to the new world of Super Intelligence - SI,” he added. Tawfik, reporting from the UN, wrote that Trump “has previously argued that the US must come out on top in the AI development race,” telling reporters last week: “Whoever wins AI, wins.” The president is firmly against government regulation or new guardrails, Tawfik reported, putting him at odds with many of those gathered at the UN. “For those who are calling for regulation, the question is whether the slow pace of diplomacy can keep up with AI’s rapid development,” Tawfik wrote.