On Tuesday, President Trump stood at the rostrum of the United Nations General Assembly and told the world he has a big decision to make about Iran: a deal, or the annihilation of the Islamic Republic. By evening, his envoys had spent 3 hours with Iran’s foreign minister, the first such meeting since mid-June. In 1965 a pope stood in that same hall and told the nations how the Church answers that choice. Her answer is the negotiating table, and she gives it without hedging.
The News Story
President Donald Trump used his address to the 81st session of the United Nations General Assembly in New York on Tuesday, September 22, 2026, to defend the war he started with Iran nearly 7 months ago. He told world leaders he faces “a big decision” between a deal that would let Iran rebuild and a campaign to destroy its government. [1]
“Will a deal be made with Iran that lets them rebuild and create a far greater country than it ever was before?” Trump 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?” He added, “Do I drive them into hell with no chance of survival and no hope of future greatness or generations?” [2]
Trump said he expects an agreement after the U.S. midterm elections on November 3. “I believe we’ll make a deal right after the election, because it doesn’t make sense for them not to,” he said, accusing Tehran of waiting “to see how I do in the midterm election.” He said the election “doesn’t even enter my mind” and that “Iran will never have a nuclear weapon.” [3]
He called Iran “the number one sponsor of terror,” said Operation Midnight Hammer had “obliterated” Iran’s nuclear program “beneath mountains of rubble,” and urged every nation to support the “complete economic isolation” of Iran until it stops attacking commercial shipping and supporting terrorism. [4]
Most of Iran’s delegation left the hall about 10 minutes into the speech, with one lower-level diplomat staying behind, according to the Times of Israel and Newsweek. Cuba’s delegation walked out when Trump said his administration sought “a fundamental change in the situation in Cuba.” [5]
Hours later, Trump said envoys Steve Witkoff and Jared Kushner had met for 3 hours with the Iranian delegation led by Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi, the first meeting between U.S. and Iranian officials since mid-June, Axios reported. Iranian state television said Washington requested the meeting and that Iran used it to set conditions for reopening the strait: lifting the U.S. naval blockade, releasing frozen Iranian assets and ending the war on all fronts. Iran’s foreign ministry said Qatari mediators carried messages between the two sides. Trump called it “a very productive meeting” and said there was “a lot of momentum” toward a deal. Foreign ministry spokesman Esmail Baghaei called the annihilation threat an “admission of committing international crimes,” Iranian state media reported. [6]
Trump also called drug cartels “the ISIS of the Western Hemisphere,” praised an oil agreement with Venezuela’s acting government, proposed renaming artificial intelligence “superintelligence,” and urged nations to withdraw from the International Criminal Court. Afterward, he signed an agreement with Denmark and Greenland on the island’s defense and met Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelenskyy; the White House had also scheduled talks with Gulf leaders on the war. [7]
A CNN poll conducted by SSRS and released the same day found 71% of U.S. adults disapprove of Trump’s handling of foreign affairs and 76% say the Iran war has not been worth its cost in American lives or money. Regular gasoline averages $4.46 a gallon, about $1.52 more than when the war began, according to GasBuddy figures cited by ABC News. [8]
Catholic Social Teaching Analysis
The Same Room, 61 Years Apart
On October 4, 1965, Paul VI became the first pope to address the United Nations. He spoke in the General Assembly Hall in New York, the room Trump spoke in on Tuesday, and he told the delegates what their institution existed to protect. “You sanction the great principle,” he said, “that relationships between nations must be regulated by reason, justice, law and negotiation, and not by force, violence, war, nor indeed by fear and deceit.” Then he gave them the sentence the whole speech had been building toward: “never again war, never again war! It is peace, peace, that has to guide the destiny of the nations of all mankind!” [9]
Set that beside Tuesday. “Will a deal be made with Iran,” the president asked from the same rostrum, “Or do I annihilate the Islamic Republic and do it quickly?” He called it a big decision, and he’s right about that much. The Church answered it a long time ago, in that room, and her answer hasn’t moved.
The Church Has Already Decided
The Compendium of the Social Doctrine of the Church gives war a single paragraph of verdicts, and none of them is gentle. War is a “scourge.” It “is never an appropriate way to resolve problems that arise between nations.” Once it erupts, it becomes an “unnecessary massacre,” an “adventure without return.” Then comes Pius XII’s line from August 24, 1939, 8 days before Germany invaded Poland: “Nothing is lost by peace; everything may be lost by war.” The next paragraph turns the verdict into an assignment. “Seeking alternative solutions to war for resolving international conflicts has taken on tremendous urgency today.” [10]
Pope John XXIII had already named the alternative, 2 years before Paul VI flew to New York. In Pacem in Terris he wrote that people were “becoming more and more convinced that any disputes which may arise between nations must be resolved by negotiation and agreement.” He saw the obstacle plainly, “the law of fear reigning supreme among nations,” and he answered it with a duty that sounds soft until you try to govern by it: “love, not fear, must dominate the relationships between individuals and between nations.” [11]
That’s the frame for Tuesday’s sentence. The deal and the annihilation are 2 instruments for moving Tehran. One works by agreement. The other works by fear. The Church has told every government, in an encyclical and in a papal speech delivered in that very hall, which of the two belongs to civilized nations.
The Word Annihilate
I’ll give the president the fairest reading I can. His stated target was “the Islamic Republic,” meaning the regime. And ABC News counts at least 8 occasions since the war began when he threatened devastating attacks on Iran and then pulled back in hopes of a deal. [12] A threat that keeps ending in talks looks more like a bargaining posture than a war plan.
But his words reached past a regime. “Do I drive them into hell with no chance of survival and no hope of future greatness or generations?” Generations belong to a people. The Second Vatican Council addressed that kind of language in what is often called the only formal condemnation of the entire Council. An act of war aimed indiscriminately at whole cities and the people in them “is a crime against God and man himself. It merits unequivocal and unhesitating condemnation.” The same paragraph then turns to the men who hold such weapons and begs “all men, especially government officials and military leaders, to give unremitting thought to their gigantic responsibility before God and the entire human race.” [13]
Read even as a bargaining posture, the threat runs on the engine John XXIII warned about. It asks Tehran to choose the deal out of terror. Paul VI put fear on the same list as force and deceit, among the things that must never regulate relations between nations. A deal Iran signs to escape annihilation holds for exactly as long as the fear does, and the popes wanted something sturdier than that for the world.
Leo XIV And The Culture Of Negotiation
Our present Holy Father has pressed this teaching hard. In Magnifica Humanitas, published in May, Leo XIV calls for a shift from the “culture of power” to a “culture of negotiation,” in which “dialogue and diplomacy become the standard means of resolving conflicts.” Then he repeats to rulers the appeal he made at the start of his pontificate: “Let us meet, let us talk, let us negotiate! War is never inevitable.” [14]
Earlier in the same encyclical he names the development openly. The “just war” theory, he writes, “has all too often been used to justify any kind of war” and “is now outdated,” while the right to self-defense “in the strictest sense” remains. Humanity has better tools: “dialogue, diplomacy and forgiveness.” He warns of a culture in which peace comes to look like “a fragile interval between conflicts.” [15] Under the older framework, a Catholic could spend this week arguing whether the war met the classic conditions when it began in February. Leo moves the question into the present tense. What matters now is whether the parties are at the table, and whether they treat the table as the standard means or as an interval between strikes.
So credit where it’s due. On Tuesday evening Steve Witkoff and Jared Kushner sat with Iran’s foreign minister, Abbas Araghchi, for 3 hours, the first meeting between the two governments since mid-June, with Qatar carrying messages. The president called it “very productive.” Let us meet, let us talk, let us negotiate: that is what happened in New York on Tuesday night, and a Catholic should say so without grudging it.
The Trouble With The Calendar
Then the president said when he expects the deal. “I believe we’ll make a deal right after the election, because it doesn’t make sense for them not to.” He says the midterms don’t enter his mind, and he accuses Tehran of waiting to see how he does. I can’t see inside anyone’s head in Washington or Tehran. But look at what the prediction does. It puts a date 6 weeks out on a peace that both sides apparently think is within reach.
The Compendium’s word was urgency. Six weeks is a long time in the Strait of Hormuz. It’s a long time for a family paying $4.46 for a gallon of gas, and a long time for Iranian civilians living under the threat the president repeated on Tuesday. If a deal makes sense in November, the same reasoning holds in October, and the Church would ask both delegations why the calendar gets a vote.
The Council saw one more piece of this. Officials “who must at one and the same time guarantee the good of their own people and promote the universal good are very greatly dependent on public opinion and feeling.” CNN’s poll says 76% of Americans think the war hasn’t been worth its cost, so public opinion is already leaning toward the table. The Council’s warning cuts the other way too. It does leaders “no good to work for peace as long as feelings of hostility, contempt and distrust” keep dividing their people. [16] A Catholic who wants this deal can start by checking how he talks about Iranians.
What I’d Watch
Watch whether the next round of talks comes before November 3 or after it. And pray, by name, for the men at that table: Steve Witkoff, Jared Kushner, Abbas Araghchi, and the Qatari diplomats carrying messages between them. Paul VI told the delegates in 1965 that anyone who takes his place in that hall “becomes a pupil and a teacher in the art of building peace.” [17] Every leader who spoke from that rostrum this week sat down for the same lesson, and it hasn’t changed in 61 years.
This story turns on the Church’s teaching that disputes between nations are settled by negotiation: reason, justice, law and agreement are the instruments of civilized peoples, and fear has no place among them.
One principle from the Church’s social teaching, applied to the week’s news, in your inbox each Saturday.
Footnotes
- “Trump in United Nations speech says ‘big decision’ ahead: Make a deal or ‘annihilate’ Iran,” ABC News, September 22, 2026, abcnews.com; “Trump in address to world leaders at UN defends his decision to start war against Iran,” Associated Press via OPB, September 22, 2026, opb.org; “Trump warns Iran to accept nuclear deal or face total annihilation,” Fox News, September 22, 2026, foxnews.com. ↩
- “Trump tells U.N. he could ‘annihilate’ Iran but expects a deal after the midterm elections,” NBC News, September 22, 2026, nbcnews.com; Fox News, “Trump warns Iran to accept nuclear deal”; ABC News, “Trump in United Nations speech says ‘big decision’ ahead.” ↩
- NBC News, “Trump tells U.N. he could ‘annihilate’ Iran”; Fox News, “Trump warns Iran to accept nuclear deal”; Avery Lotz, “Trump says he faces a decision whether to ‘annihilate’ Iran in UN speech,” Axios, September 22, 2026, axios.com; Associated Press via OPB, “Trump in address to world leaders at UN.” ↩
- “Trump says Iran deal nearing after UN talks as Tehran sets conditions to reopen Strait of Hormuz,” Fox News live updates, September 22, 2026, foxnews.com; “Trump defends military action against Iran, Venezuela, and calls for rebrand of AI,” UN News, September 22, 2026, news.un.org. ↩
- “Most of Iran’s delegation walks out of Trump’s UN speech in protest,” The Times of Israel, September 22, 2026, timesofisrael.com; “Trump says Iran meeting ‘very good’ after delegates walk out of UNGA speech,” Newsweek, September 22, 2026, newsweek.com; NBC News, “Trump tells U.N. he could ‘annihilate’ Iran.” ↩
- “U.S. and Iran officials meet in New York to discuss ending the war,” Axios, September 22, 2026, axios.com; Fox News live updates, “Trump says Iran deal nearing after UN talks”; ABC News, “Trump in United Nations speech says ‘big decision’ ahead”; NBC News, “Trump tells U.N. he could ‘annihilate’ Iran”; “Iran calls Trump’s annihilation threat ‘admission of committing international crimes,'” The Tribune, accessed September 23, 2026, tribuneindia.com. ↩
- ABC News, “Trump in United Nations speech says ‘big decision’ ahead”; UN News, “Trump defends military action against Iran, Venezuela”; NBC News, “Trump tells U.N. he could ‘annihilate’ Iran”; “Trump U.N. speech: Key takeaways from his General Assembly address,” MS NOW, September 22, 2026, ms.now; Associated Press via OPB, “Trump in address to world leaders at UN.” ↩
- “Republican support for Trump’s handling of war in Iran shows cracks in new CNN poll,” CNN, September 22, 2026, cnn.com; ABC News, “Trump in United Nations speech says ‘big decision’ ahead.” ↩
- Pope Paul VI, Address to the United Nations Organization (New York, October 4, 1965), vatican.va. ↩
- Pontifical Council for Justice and Peace, Compendium of the Social Doctrine of the Church (Vatican City: Libreria Editrice Vaticana, 2004), nos. 497-498, vatican.va. ↩
- Pope John XXIII, Encyclical Letter Pacem in Terris: On Establishing Universal Peace in Truth, Justice, Charity, and Liberty (Vatican City: Libreria Editrice Vaticana, April 11, 1963), nos. 126, 128-129, vatican.va. ↩
- ABC News, “Trump in United Nations speech says ‘big decision’ ahead.” ↩
- Second Vatican Council, Pastoral Constitution Gaudium et Spes (December 7, 1965), no. 80, vatican.va. ↩
- Pope Leo XIV, Encyclical Letter Magnifica Humanitas: On Safeguarding the Human Person in the Time of Artificial Intelligence (Vatican City: Libreria Editrice Vaticana, May 15, 2026), nos. 221-222, vatican.va. ↩
- Pope Leo XIV, Magnifica Humanitas, no. 192. ↩
- Second Vatican Council, Gaudium et Spes, no. 82. ↩
- Pope Paul VI, Address to the United Nations Organization. ↩
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