Trump’s threat to annihilate Iran to UN general assembly is stunning, even for him

Donald Trump at the 81st United Nations general assembly at UN headquarters in New York City on Tuesday. Photograph: Shannon Stapleton/ReutersView image in fullscreenDonald Trump at the 81st United Nations general assembly at UN headquarters in New York City on Tuesday.

Fotografia: Shannon Stapleton/Reuters Donald Trump Análise A ameaça de Trump de aniquilar o Irã na Assembleia Geral das Nações Unidas é surpreendente, mesmo para ele Robert Tait em Washington O presidente dos EUA pode ter superado o fantasma do líder soviético Khrushchev ao contemplar a destruição de um Estado membro.

Donald Trump has a habit of discomfiting delegates to the United Nations general assembly. But this year, he may have upstaged the ghost of Nikita Khrushchev by openly contemplating the annihilation of a fellow UN member state.

Eleven minutes into a 40-minute address, the US president announced he had “a big decision to make” over Iran, which has staged a much more determined resistance than Trump anticipated when he decided to go to war against the country in February.

Read more“Will a deal be made with Iran that lets them rebuild, and create a far greater country than it ever was before?” he asked. “Or do I annihilate the Islamic Republic and do it quickly, never giving them a chance to kill and destroy people and countries again.

Do I drive them into hell with no chance of survival and no hope of future greatness or generations?”.

Possibly not since Khrushchev, the late Soviet leader, brandished his shoe and allegedly banged it on a desk in 1960 in protest at a fellow delegate’s speech has the annual gathering witnessed such a display of bellicosity from a superpower leader.

The world may have become inured to Trump’s dire threats to send Iran “to the stone age” or end its civilization – so often have they been issued, only to sometimes be followed by a ceasefire or negotiations.

But hearing them voiced in a forum created in the aftermath of the second world war, with the explicit aim of preventing future conflicts, was disconcerting.

Iran was the focal point of much of Trump’s speech, which began with a catalogue of familiar boasts of his supposed achievements that seemed better fitted to a domestic audience.

Seja ou não a mais recente ameaça deve ser levada literalmente, pouco do que ele disse sobre o Irã parecia tranquilizador. Ele parecia jogar rápido e solto com os fatos, conscientemente ou não.

The US president twice incorrectly asserted that the theocratic regime had held power for 51 years. In fact, the Islamic revolution that toppled the pro-western former Shah, Mohammad Reza Pahlavi, and installed the current regime happened 47 years ago, in 1979.

Trump também citou números aparentemente inflados para o número de iranianos mortos em protestos anti-governo em janeiro passado, semanas antes da guerra. “O mesmo regime massacrou mais de 72.

000 de seus cidadãos este ano”, disse ele, em apoio à sua declaração frequentemente afirmada de que o Irã nunca deveria ser permitido adquirir armas nucleares.

No definitive death toll has been established. But previous estimates of people killed in the brutal crushing of January’s demonstrations – even including those previously stated by Trump himself – have been much lower.

The ominous rhetoric was not limited to Iran.

Members of the Cuban delegation were seen leaving the hall as he predicted the imminent collapse of the country’s communist regime, which has been struggling to cope with a food security and humanitarian crisis amid tightening US embargoes.

US actions in Venezuela, where special forces last January seized the strongman president, Nicolás Maduro, and spirited him to New York to face drug-trafficking charges, was also cited as an ominous warning to other adversaries – as well as a vocal statement of how the administration would behave in Latin America, Washington’s supposed “back yard”, if it felt its interests threatened.

Ele foi descaradamente audacioso ao elogiar um recente acordo de petróleo dos EUA com a presidente interina venezuelana, Delcy Rodríguez, que ele alegou colocar os EUA e a Venezuela em conjunto no controle de mais de 60% do petróleo mundial.

There was outright antipathy for the international criminal court, which Trump called an “out-of-control institution” and “an evil group of people”. “We will never allow US service members or anyone else to be investigated or given show trials by an anti-American tribunal with no jurisdiction over us,” he said.

Given his pugnacious stance towards US adversaries, it probably came as a relief to Washington’s traditional friends that Trump had relatively kind words for them.

It was a far cry from his general assembly speech a year ago, when he warned European allies “your countries are all going to hell” because of immigration.

This time, in a pointed message, Trump praised Nato’s secretary general, Mark Rutte, as a “great leader” – a marked departure from his previous denunciations of the military alliance as “obsolete” and a “paper tiger”.

He lauded Denmark as “an incredible, beautiful country”, just days after announcing an agreement with it over Greenland, following prolonged tensions over the territory, which Trump had previously threatened to annex.

Com essa questão aparentemente resolvida – pelo menos por enquanto – o presidente declarou sua intenção de mostrar força em um novo campo de batalha: inteligência artificial, ou AI.

Ecoando postagens recentes nas redes sociais, Trump comparou as recentes chamadas para desacelerar seu desenvolvimento, com a justificativa de que seu rápido desenvolvimento representa uma ameaça existencial à humanidade, como um “esquema globalista” elaborado pelas mesmas forças que ele culpou pelas advertências sobre mudança climática, uma premissa que ele tem chamado há muito tempo de “hoax”.

Part of the answer, he said, was to change its name. Henceforth it would cease to be called “artificial” (“it makes it sound fake – and it’s not fake”) and would be called “super intelligence” in all US government documents.