WASHINGTON — President Donald Trump’s unapologetic and chest-thumping address Tuesday before the U.N. General Assembly signaled an aggressive lame-duck foreign policy that will continue to reframe the world order.

He stepped to the lectern in the massive hall in New York City for the fifth time — his 2020 General Assembly address was delivered virtually, during the COVID-19 pandemic — now at war with the White House press corps, Iran and several Tehran-backed proxy groups. Trump let the world know he had no intention to change course at home or abroad.

“We have acted with decisiveness and speed to reshape the world stage and solve problems that have plagued us for far too long,” he told other world leaders. “As president of the most extraordinary nation in history, I have no interest in leaving dangers to grow for another day. I do not believe in letting problems fester — they only become harder to solve.”

His second-term foreign policy has so far been detached from his “America first” 2024 campaign slogan. Nothing reflects his defiant global approach this term more than his standoff with Iran. The native New Yorker conjured his inner Tony Soprano as he essentially said “fuggetaboutit” to critics who want him to cut a deal with Iran’s remaining leaders and end a conflict that has driven up global gasoline and energy prices.

“I will never allow Iran to have a nuclear weapon,” he said, warning that Iran was pursuing “an arsenal of nuclear annihilation,” which he once claimed U.S. bomber strikes last year had “obliterated,” before recently dropping that claim.

“But 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 even the world? Or do I annihilate the Islamic Republic — and do it quickly, never giving them a chance to kill and destroy people and countries again?” Trump said, his tone turning more serious.

He said he could choose to use military strikes to “drive them into hell with no chance of survival and no hope of future greatness or generations,” before adding that he still believes “we’ll make a deal right after the election, because it doesn’t make sense for them not to.”

His intransigence towards Iran, some Republicans worry, could be a major thorn in the side of their party’s congressional candidates in November’s midterm elections. A RealClearPolitics average of several recent polls gives Democrats an 8.3 percentage point advantage on a generic congressional ballot.

Trump’s disapproval level on his handling of the Iran conflict hit 60% in a YouGov-The Economist survey conducted Sept. 11-14, with 33% voicing approval. Sixty-six percent of respondents disapproved of Trump’s handling of inflation, with 29% approving, according to the same poll.

Trump did not spell out a path to an end to the conflict with Iran, which energy analysts say likely will help trigger a further spike in gas prices in the United States in the midterms’ final stretch.

Trump appeared unconcerned with his lack of an exit plan or about how the nearly seven-month-old conflict could affect his party’s attempt to retain control of the House and Senate. If Democrats win the House, they would have investigative and subpoena powers to pull back the layers of the onion that has been his second term. In fact, the day after Election Day appeared to be his lone path out of the stalemate.

“They’re waiting to see how I do in the midterm election,” Trump said of Iran. “What they don’t realize is that I’m not running. I’ll be here for two-and-a-half years.”

“The Republican Party is running, and I’ll be helping them,” he said.

He then delivered hawkish claims about his administration working with U.S. defense firms to fast-track new missiles and ammunition. And he called on U.N. member countries to “join us in enforcing the complete economic isolation of Iran until they stop their attacks on commercial shipping, relinquish their nuclear ambitions and cease their support of terror.”

Russia and Ukraine

He also did not detail any new plan to try ending the bloody Russia-Ukraine war, which candidate Trump in 2024 promised to end on the first day of his second term. More than 600 days since he returned to power, the fighting in Eastern Europe rages, with recent Ukrainian attacks on Russian energy targets also, analysts say, risking another gas price hike.

All he offered Tuesday was a version of the same years-old but unfulfilled line: “We’re working very closely with the leaders of Russia and Ukraine, and we will get that one done. It’s going to happen, I think, more quickly than people understand,” he said.

In many ways, Trump’s latest General Assembly address offers a juxtaposition to his acceptance speech on election night in November 2016, showing how much his foreign policy philosophy has evolved. Back then, he described himself as a once-in-a-generation figure who would heal all of America’s ailments at home — largely by diminishing its role as a global leader and ending its post-9/11 military conflicts.

“So while others have talked, I have acted. While others have spoken of peace, I have made peace. While others have ignored threats, I have confronted them,” he said. “While others have talked of courage, America has shown it. While others have promised strength, I have used it to make America the most powerful country in the world.”

‘Will not allow’

To a silent hall, he boasted about the U.S. military action in Venezuela that nabbed Nicolás Maduro and led to a still-vague oil deal between the two countries. He again resisted robust artificial-intelligence regulation by casting AI as an economic growth engine for the U.S. And notably, he sounded skeptical about ongoing diplomatic talks with Cuba’s government, which are being led by Secretary of State Marco Rubio.

“My administration is also seeking a fundamental change in the situation in Cuba” because “it’s an absolutely failed state,” Trump said. “We will not allow a haven for foreign adversaries to threaten America on our own doorstep, right at our doorstep.”

The speech showed again how Trump 2.0 — even more than the first Trump presidency — has reshaped Washington’s standing around the world, its growing distance from traditional allies and his own willingness to embrace hardliners.

But Michael McFaul, U.S. ambassador to Russia under President Barack Obama from 2012 to 2014, wrote recently on Substack that while “Trumpism” at home likely will last for some time after he leaves office, foreign policy could be a different story.

“Without question, President Trump has done real damage to American power and purpose in global affairs in ways that will take years, if not decades, to repair. His second term has wreaked more havoc than his first,” wrote McFaul, now a professor at Stanford University. “But to assume that this current trajectory is permanent is analytically inaccurate and prescriptively dangerous.”

“In his second term, Trump has not followed or reflected the will of the majority on foreign policy. Instead, he has pursued a series of foreign policy initiatives driven solely by his own desires,” McFaul added. “Trump the individual, not innate structural forces, is the cause of much of the irrational, imprudent chaos unfolding in American foreign policy today. … Change is possible. Change is even probable.”

But that kind of sweeping foreign policy change, regardless of November’s winners, is still two elections and 18 months away.

“Last week, in honor of Sen. Lindsey Graham, I signed a powerful new law passed by Congress, providing me with enormous new tariff authorities,” Trump said. “And if necessary, I will have to use them.”

Murmuring among the assembled leaders began even before he had left the room, after reminding them he would not be leaving the world stage anytime soon.

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