Many world leaders are bracing for President Donald Trump’s address to the United Nations this week after he shook up global heads with his threats against North Korea last year.
This year, the Washington Post wrote that Iran could find itself the subject of tough talk from Trump as the president is likely to bolster United States’ move to leave the multi-nation agreement with Iran since the last UN visit.
In last year’s speech, Trump taunted North Korean leader Kim Jong Un from the stage, dubbing him “Rocket Man” and threatening to “totally destroy” the country if it took action that led the U.S. to defend itself.
While they traded insults after the speech, the two leaders met in a historic summit earlier this year.
This year, experts believe that Trump will claim that imposing sanctions on Iran again and pulling out of a joint deal preventing the country from creating a nuclear weapon was the correct strategy, USA Today stated.
“The message is going to be ‘Our strategy is serious and we’re committed to it,’” Ilan Berman, of the American Foreign Policy Council, told USA Today last week. “This meeting is a very important opportunity for this administration to signal that the worst pain is yet to come.”
USA Today wrote that Trump’s goal will be wider than punishing Iran, but to convince the other nations that took part in the President Barack Obama-era agreement – the United Kingdom, Russia, France, China, and Germany – that the deal cannot be salvaged.
The Trump administration is also promising economic hostilities against businesses that are dealing with Iran to up the pressure while asking for the U.N. Security Council to additional penalties against the country, USA Today noted.
The tough talk against Iran will play in the background of Trump’s overall theme of sovereignty as a top principle of U.S. foreign policy.
“Sovereignty is a priority,” Nikki Haley, Trump’s ambassador to the United Nations, said about the president’s upcoming message, according to USA Today . “It’s going to be the will of the American people, not the will of the international community.”
The Washington Post suggested that the United Nations as a whole may not find Trump’s words friendly to it, pointing out that the president’s speech was written by aide Stephen Miller, a longtime critic of the United Nations.
The U.S., for its part, has removed itself from the UN’s Human Rights Council and UNESCO, the organization’s cultural agency since the last general assembly meeting a year ago. The Trump administration also threatened the International Criminal Court last month as well, the Post stated.
John Bolton, Trump’s national security adviser, has long been an intense U.N. critic since the George W. Bush administration.
