Bloomberg
It was jarring when US President Donald Trump appeared before the United Nations and threatened to annihilate Iran. Even more dissonant was that hardly anyone batted an eye.
“Will a deal be made with Iran that lets them rebuild?” Trump mused from the green-marble rostrum, laying out his alternative scenario of obliteration.
“Do I drive them into hell with no chance of survival and no hope of future greatness?” he asked.
As ominous portents go, it was an all-timer.
Critics have long accused the UN of irrelevance, but those arguments feel more acute at this year’s session. Rarely have the world’s most powerful nations seemed so unwilling to seek forgiveness — to say nothing of permission — for their actions.
The world body has been relegated to the sidelines more than ever this year, helpless to stop the US-Israeli war on Iran, China’s amped-up stance in the South China Sea, or Russia’s war on Ukraine.
Iranian diplomats walked out when Trump threatened to destroy their country, but others in attendance didn’t seem to care.
Underscoring the disconnect between the UN chamber and real life, mediated talks between US and Iranian officials took place later — ones Trump described as productive.
Secretary-General António Guterres lamented the power plays on show while sounding the alarm about the next global threat: artificial intelligence.
AI titans Sam Altman and Dario Amodei are due to address the Security Council today to advocate slowing the breakneck AI advances they helped push forward.
Those pleas are falling on the same deaf ears that greeted Trump’s Iran threat. China says it has no plans to let up in the AI race. Trump brushed off the notion as a “globalist scheme.”
Guterres talked of a better future, when superpowers recognize that “their power isn’t so super.”
The US and the world’s other strongest nations aren’t getting the message. — Nick Wadhams