This week’s UN General Assembly brought attention-grabbing speeches from the presidents of the United States, Ukraine, and Iran. Each speech contained small moments that didn’t make it into the headlines, but deserve attention nonetheless.
Let’s start with President Donald Trump’s speech, which swung like a wild pendulum between the ridiculous and the horrifying.
Ridiculously, Trump twice referred to the “51-year menace of Iranian terror.” The Islamic Republic of Iran was founded in 1979. Trump also said he would end the war in Ukraine “more quickly than people understand.” Previously he’d promised to get the war resolved on the first day of his presidency.
Trump’s speech, however ridiculous, was not funny. It was horrifying. He stood in front of the world’s foremost international organization and threatened to “annihilate the Islamic Republic of Iran and do it quickly” and “drive them into hell with no chance of survival and no hope of future greatness or generations.” He defended the theft of Venezuelan oil with the boast that “to the victor belong the spoils.” He said that American pressure will cause Cuba to “fall.”
Trump also let slip an accidental truth, admitting that the U.S. raid this January in Venezuela constituted “a war.” At the time of the operation, the legal justification offered by Secretary of State Marco Rubio was that it was not a war but “a law enforcement function” to apprehend the Venezuelan president.
Trump promised that he “will never allow Iran to have a nuclear weapon.” But it was Trump, in his first term, who walked away from the JCPOA, the agreement that provided the best chance of preventing Iranian acquisition of a nuclear weapon. And it was Trump who authorized attacks on Iran, rather than keeping up the negotiations that might have yielded a lasting deal.
Trump also said that “Iran’s goal was to complete their mad dash to a nuclear bomb.” The 2022 U.S. Department of Defense Nuclear Posture Review concluded that “Iran does not today possess a nuclear weapon and we currently believe it is not pursuing one.” That assessment was repeated in the 2025 Annual Threat Assessment, which stated that U.S. intelligence continues to assess “Iran is not building a nuclear weapon.” In March, Director General of the International Atomic Energy Agency Rafael Grossi verified that “no evidence” had been found “that Iran is building a nuclear bomb.” And then-Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard told a Senate Intelligence Committee that since America’s June bombing of Iran, “there has been no effort… to try to rebuild their enrichment capability.”
Trump consistently exaggerated America’s military achievements in Iran. He said that Iran’s “missiles and drone manufacturing capacity is almost gone.” But Iran has continued to demonstrate the capacity to strike targets with its ballistic missiles and drones. U.S. intelligence and the military assessed earlier this year that Iran still had at least 60 percent of its missile launchers and 40 percent of its attack drones. And many of the missile stockpiles that were protected deep underground were untouched by the most intense American strikes. American intelligence now reports that Iran has resumed production of ballistic missiles. Meanwhile, the U.S. has burned through dangerous quantities of its most valuable weapons, resulting “in strategic inventory shortfalls.”
Trump said that “more oil is flowing” through the Strait of Hormuz “than at any point since the start of the war” and that as many as 37 ships are transiting the strait every day. But the United Kingdom Maritime Trade Operations group has said “independent monitoring shows significantly fewer commercial vessels are transiting the Strait of Hormuz than figures released by the U.S. military.” Other reports suggest that the number of ships transiting the strait daily has recently dropped below the average of 17. Before the war, that figure was 125.
On to the speech by Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelensky.
Zelensky made a number of claims that were misleading. He said that “the Russian army lost 248,964 people on the battlefield in Ukraine in 8 months.” But in fact, it may be the Ukrainian army that has lost around that number, according to both Ukrainian official Kyrylo Budanov—who recently said Ukraine needs 30,000 new soldiers a month “to maintain what we have”—and Polish Prime Minister Donald Tusk, who recently said that Kiev told him 27,000 Ukrainian soldiers were being killed or wounded each month.
Following the failure of a PR campaign to convince the world that Ukraine has turned the tide, the new campaign to keep Europe on board is reaching a crescendo with warnings that Russia is planning a conventional attack. Zelensky repeated the warning that Russia “constantly threatens Poland and the Baltic States,” that “Russia may go further into Europe, even into NATO territory,” and that “leaders have intelligence showing Russian intentions.”
Both claims are dubious. General Alexus Grynkewich, head of U.S. European Command, said over the summer that there is no need for concern about Russia expanding the war by attacking a Baltic country because “Russia is not looking for a conflict” and they wouldn’t “risk” something when they “understand that… they won’t succeed.” Asked in July about the warnings of Russia attacking a Baltic country, Ulf Kristersson, prime minister of nearby Sweden, agreed: “We don’t see any signs of that.” Estonian intelligence likewise assessed that “Russia has no intention of militarily attacking Estonia or any other NATO member state in the coming year” and that “we are likely to reach a similar assessment next year.”
Finally, we come to Iranian president Masoud Pezeshkian. Among the more notable features of his speech is that he said about the U.S. the kind of thing that Zelensky has accurately said about Russia: that a major power attacked his country “but we did not bend the knee. We did not bow our head.”
Perhaps the most important thing about the speech is that Pezeshkian stressed Iran was prepared for a return to negotiations but that it had learned “we need strength, because a people which is unable to defend itself will be trampled upon in today’s world.”
While signaling openness to diplomacy, Pezeshkian reiterated that Iran will not give up its right to enrich uranium for civilian nuclear purposes: “No nuclear weapons, and no limitations to peaceful nuclear technology,” he said, adding that “Iran does not seek special treatment” but that holds that nuclear technology should not be “at the exclusive disposal of some, of a handful.”
Pezeshkian also pointed to the growing momentum toward an inclusive regional security architecture, saying that Tehran has “a deep belief that no one in this region will have security alone. Either we will build it together, or we will have to live under insecurity together.”
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