NEW YORK — President Donald Trump revealed Tuesday that his special envoys held three hours of talks with Iranian officials on the sidelines of the United Nations General Assembly — hours after he stood before the same gathering and threatened to "annihilate the Islamic Republic" and "drive them into hell."
The secretly arranged meeting began around 10 a.m., Trump said, and was still underway as he delivered his annual address to world leaders at the 81st General Assembly. The U.S. side was represented by Trump's special envoy Steve Witkoff and his son-in-law Jared Kushner. According to Iranian state media, Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi represented Tehran, and the United States had requested the meeting.
"It was a very good meeting, I must tell you," Trump told reporters just before 2 p.m. during a press availability with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy. "I can't imagine why they wouldn't want to [make a deal]. It's potential greatness or obliteration. It's two choices."
"They had a very good meeting, very productive meeting, and they have another one scheduled in the very near future," Trump said.
It was the first known high-level negotiation between the two sides since a cease-fire and memorandum of understanding collapsed in July.
Trump vacillated between threats of intense violence and predictions of peace throughout the day. In his General Assembly speech, he laid out the choice as he sees it:
"I have a big decision to make: 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 do I annihilate the Islamic Republic and do it quickly, never giving them a chance to kill and destroy people and countries again?"
Iranian diplomats walked out during his remarks, according to the New York Post.
The talks were conducted through mediators shuttling between the two delegations, Witkoff said in a post on X. "They successfully completed a round of discussions that we hope will prove constructive and promising. The mediators will continue their work." Qatar and Pakistan, which have served as the main interlocutors between Washington and Tehran since the war began, brokered the session, according to multiple reports.
Tehran came to the table with firm conditions. Iran's state broadcaster IRIB reported the country's "firm positions" for reopening the Strait of Hormuz: the immediate lifting of the U.S. naval blockade, the release of frozen Iranian assets, and an end to the war "on all resistance fronts" — an apparent reference to Lebanon and Yemen. Iran also offered last week to reopen the strait within a seven-day period if the U.S. ends its blockade and military pressure campaign, Reuters reported.
The war between the U.S. and Israel on one side and Iran on the other began in late February and is now nearly seven months old. Bloomberg reports the conflict has roiled the Middle East, caused energy prices to soar, and is hurting Trump and the Republican party ahead of the Nov. 3 midterm elections. Brent crude has fallen more than 5 percent this week on signs of renewed diplomacy, but remains up 62 percent this year, and U.S. diesel pump prices are at a record high.
The human cost has been severe. Iran and its allied militant groups have damaged U.S. bases in the region and killed 19 American service members, according to Bloomberg. Traffic through the Strait of Hormuz — a crucial waterway for oil, natural gas and other commodities — has been effectively halted, with only smaller volumes getting through under U.S. military escort. This month, the Iran-backed Houthis in Yemen stepped up attacks on Saudi Arabia, including on its energy infrastructure, and the kingdom had to shut down its main oil-export pipeline following a drone attack from Iraq, where pro-Tehran militias are based.
Beyond Hormuz and frozen assets, Washington and Tehran are also meant to strike a deal curbing Iran's nuclear program — on which there has been next to no progress since the June truce collapsed. Trump previously signed a memorandum of understanding with Iranian leaders on June 17, but that tentative deal fell apart weeks later when Iran attacked several commercial ships in the Strait of Hormuz for using a U.S.-preferred route along the Omani coast. During an afternoon meeting with Middle Eastern leaders, Trump said he might order air raids on Iran's alleged nuclear facility at Pickaxe Mountain, telling them: "We're not seeing a lot of activity there, but if we do, we'll blow it up immediately."
"Iran will never have a nuclear weapon," Trump declared at the UN.
Speaking alongside the president, Zelenskyy thanked Trump for his support and expressed hope diplomacy could end Russia's war in Ukraine before winter — a separate conversation that also touched on a possible U.S. diesel export ban, potential Patriot missile production in Ukraine, and a Belarus potash deal.
The Gulf states, which have endured thousands of Iranian missiles and drones during the conflict and watched their economies contract or slow from the Hormuz disruption, were urging Trump to avoid escalation in favor of diplomacy. Their leaders, including Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, Syrian President Ahmed al-Sharaa and Qatari Emir Tamim bin Hamad Al Thani, met with Trump on Tuesday afternoon.
"We think that the situation with Iran could end right after the midterm elections, maybe before. You never know," Trump told them — adding there could come "a time when it's too late, and we won't have a chance of letting them survive as a nation."
Iranian President Masoud Pezeshkian is set to address the General Assembly on Wednesday.
- National Correspondent Network
