The U.N. General Assembly in New York this week honed in on global conflicts, especially the Ukraine-Russia war and the U.S.-Israel war against Iran. On Tuesday, Iran’s President Masoud Pezeshkian gave a speech describing his nation as “victims of terrorism” by the U.S., emphasizing that Iran was “hit” but “we did not bend the knee.” He held up images of more than 120 children killed by a U.S. missile strike in the early days of the war, actions described last week by a U.N. fact-finding mission as “reasonable grounds” for war crimes.
“It must be understood by Mr. Trump and those who seek to bully us that we are ready for dialogue and diplomacy and negotiations without accepting the language of force,” Pezeshkian said. It was, as the Associated Press put it, “a striking instance of a foreign leader addressing the world body while their country is at war with the host nation.” A U.S. representative at the U.N. walked out during Pezeshkian’s speech.
U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio dismissed Pezeshkian’s speech, telling reporters afterward “I don’t know what standing Iran has to lecture anyone on human rights or the international system when they habitually violate it.”
“They violate the sovereignty of every one of their neighbors by sponsoring terrorist organizations that reside in the borders of those countries. They slaughter their own people,” Rubio added.
(Photo by Alexi J. Rosenfeld/Getty Images) President of Iran Masoud Pezeshkian holds up a poster of a girl’s school that was attacked while addressing the 81st session of the U.N. General Assembly on September 23, 2026.
During his own speech the day before, Trump continued to mull the idea of escalating the Iran war, which has seen global energy prices spike to unprecedented levels and killed between 1,800 to 3,000 civilians across the Middle East. The Washington Post reported last week that the Pentagon is also not disclosing the true number of U.S. soldiers who have died in the war. The Pentagon’s public database cites 18 servicemember deaths, but officials who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss the figures, said the true number could be as high as 23.
“I have a big decision to make,” Trump said Tuesday. “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. Or do I annihilate the Islamic Republic and do it quickly, never giving them a chance to kill and destroy people and countries again?”
Meanwhile, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy delivered remarks Wednesday urging the world to keep up the economic pressure on Russia to impede their ability to wage war against Ukraine. “When someone gives Russia more money through trade, they give this war more time. And that is exactly why we insist on limiting trade with the aggressor, and why we are burning Russia’s revenues ourselves,” he said, describing Russian President Vladimir Putin as unable to embrace peace. Russia will address the assembly Saturday.
“Can you even imagine him without war? He is ‘Patient Zero’, the one from whom war keeps spreading further,” Zelenskyy said. “‘Patient Zero’ must be stopped.”
Additionally, Japan’s prime minister, Sanae Takaichi, called on the U.N. to stop using references to former Axis powers as “enemy states” in its charter, a World War II-era designation that the New York Times reports China and Russia have recently used to attack Japan. “Japan feels a sense of responsibility to safeguard the ideals of the United Nations as our beacon of hope,” Takaichi said on Tuesday.
