Trump Calls US-Iran Meeting at the UN ‘Very Good’ After Warning He Could ‘Annihilate’ the Islamic Republic
The Iran talks at the UN wrapped after three hours on Tuesday, Donald Trump told reporters, a strikingly calm coda to a speech in which he'd spent the morning threatening to erase the country entirely.
Addressing the UN General Assembly in New York, the American president framed the nearly seven-month war with Iran as a binary choice. Iran could accept a deal and rebuild into, in his words, one of the greatest countries in the Middle East, or he could "annihilate the Islamic Republic" and give it no chance of recovery. He lingered on the second option rhetorically, then turned hours later to describe the day's actual diplomacy in far cooler terms.
What the Iran Talks at the UN Actually Produced
The substance behind the podium theatrics was a closed-door meeting between US and Iran...