- US president uses UNGA address to launch attack on Iranian leadership
- Used speech to praise Saudi Arabia and the UAE for roles in improving regional security
NEW YORK: Donald Trump launched a blistering attack on Iran on Tuesday as a “corrupt dictatorship” that sows “chaos, death and destruction.”
Iran’s leaders “do not respect their neighbors or borders or the sovereign rights of nations,” the US president told the UN General Assembly in New York. “Instead they plunder the nation’s resources to enrich themselves and to spread mayhem across the Middle East and far beyond.”
Trump criticized Iran’s “bloody agenda” in Syria and Yemen in particular, and pledged to continue to isolate Tehran through US sanctions that are being reimposed following his withdrawal this year from the 2015 deal to curb Iran’s nuclear program. The next round of sanctions will take effect in early November and Trump said they would not be the last.
Trump said the nuclear deal was a “windfall” for Iran’s leaders who used billions in sanctions relief to boost their military budget, increase repression, fund terrorism, havoc and slaughter in Syria and Yemen, and enrich themselves.
Trump praised Saudi Arabia and the UAE for their roles in improving regional security and helping those affected by conflicts in Syria and Yemen, and also congratulated the Saudi leadership for its ambitious reform program. He outlined the progress made since his first foreign visit as president to Saudi Arabia. “In the Middle East, our new approach is yielding great strides and very historic change. Following my trip to Saudi Arabia last year, the Gulf countries opened a new center to target terrorist financing.”
“They are enforcing new sanctions, working with us to identify and track terrorist networks, and taking more responsibility for fighting terrorism and extremism in their own region,” he said
He said the US would create a regional strategic alliance between Gulf states and Jordan and Egypt.
“We cannot allow Iran, the world’s leading sponsor of terrorism, to possess the planet’s most dangerous weapons,” Trump said.
Later, Trump said: “Everything about Iran is failing right now.” He described its inflation as the worst in the world and its currency as a “disaster.”
“I think that at some point we will have meaningful discussions and probably do a deal,” he said. “I don’t see how it works for them otherwise. Because otherwise, they’re going to be in the worst economic trouble of any country in the world.”