October 05, 2018
President Trump went before the United Nations to ask “all nations to isolate Iran’s regime” and also promised that he will impose even more sanctions on Iran after the oil sanctions are re-imposed in November.
Trump was very harsh in his rhetoric about the Islamic Republic but he made a point of differentiating the Iranian regime from the Iranian people.
For example, he urged the world to isolate “Iran’s regime,” not Iran. And he asked all nations “to support Iran’s people.” He made a point of saying that “Iran’s leaders,” not Iran, “sow chaos, death and destruction.”
Other American officials have not always been careful to make that distinction. Someone in Trump’s White House has noted that whenever US officials condemn “Iran” or the “Iranian nation,” the propaganda operation of the regime says the Americans say openly that they hate the Iranian people.
Trump didn’t make Iran the chief topic of his annual address to the UN. After boasting of how great a president he is (and drawing laughter from the audience), he spoke about North Korea, the Arab states of the Persian Gulf, and Syria before moving on to Iran. Here is the full text of what Trump said about Iran.
“Every solution to the humanitarian crisis in Syria must also include a strategy to address the brutal regime that has fueled and financed it: the corrupt dictatorship in Iran.
“Iran’s leaders sow chaos, death, and destruction. They do not respect their neighbors or borders, or the sovereign rights of nations. Instead, Iran’s leaders plunder the nation’s resources to enrich themselves and to spread mayhem across the Middle East and far beyond.
“The Iranian people are rightly outraged that their leaders have embezzled billions of dollars from Iran’s treasury, seized valuable portions of the economy, and looted the people’s religious endowments, all to line their own pockets and send their proxies to wage war. Not good.
“Iran’s neighbors have paid a heavy toll for the regime’s agenda of aggression and expansion. That is why so many countries in the Middle East strongly supported my decision to withdraw the United States from the horrible 2015 Iran Nuclear Deal and re-impose nuclear sanctions.
“The Iran deal was a windfall for Iran’s leaders. In the years since the deal was reached, Iran’s military budget grew nearly 40 percent. The dictatorship used the funds to build nuclear-capable missiles, increase internal repression, finance terrorism, and fund havoc and slaughter in Syria and Yemen.
“The United States has launched a campaign of economic pressure to deny the regime the funds it needs to advance its bloody agenda. Last month, we began re-imposing hard-hitting nuclear sanctions that had been lifted under the Iran deal. Additional sanctions will resume November 5th, and more will follow. And we’re working with countries that import Iranian crude oil to cut their purchases substantially.
“We cannot allow the world’s leading sponsor of terrorism to possess the planet’s most dangerous weapons. We cannot allow a regime that chants “Death to America,” and that threatens Israel with annihilation, to possess the means to deliver a nuclear warhead to any city on Earth. Just can’t do it.
“We ask all nations to isolate Iran’s regime as long as its aggression continues. And we ask all nations to support Iran’s people as they struggle to reclaim their religious and righteous destiny,” Trump said as he moved on to other topics.
Only about 10 percent of Trump’s speech was devoted to Iran.
No one fleshed out his brief remark that “more [sanctions] will follow” the oil sanctions to go into effect November 4. On November 4, all the sanctions that President Obama imposed will be re-imposed. It is not clear what more Trump could do. He may just be referring to imposing sanctions on more individual officials—actions that have little substantive impact.
In Iran, much of the official and media reaction played off the laughter that followed Trump’s fourth sentence, in which he claimed: “In less than two years, my administration has accomplished more than almost any administration in the history of our country.”
Foreign Minister Moham-mad-Javad Zarif and many others said the laughter showed that the United States is isolated in the world and no longer has much influence. The commentaries missed the point—which was not missed by many in Europe—that Trump is fundamentally pursuing an isolationist foreign policy, in which he has no interest in leading the world or joining multi-national efforts, but seeks only to pursue narrow US interests.
“America is governed by Americans. We reject the ideology of globalism and we embrace the doctrine of patriotism…. America will always choose independence and cooperation over global governance, control and domination,” he said. “I honor the right of every nation in this room to pursue its own customs, beliefs and traditions. The United States will not tell you how to live or worship.” Given the Islamic Republic’s decades-old positions, it should have welcomed those statements by Trump. But, instead, it just ignored them.
Trump went on to say, “America’s policy of principled realism means we will not be held hostage to old dogmas, discredited ideologies and so-called experts who have been proven wrong over the years, time and time again…. We must protect our sovereignty and our cherished independence above all.”
Trump also had a brief passage on OPEC, which he treated to the back of his hand.
“OPEC and OPEC nations are, as usual, ripping off the rest of the world—and I don’t like it. Nobody should like it. We defend many of these nations for nothing, and then they take advantage of us by giving us high oil prices. Not good. We want them to stop raising prices; we want them to start lowering prices. And they must contribute substantially to [their own] military protection from now on. We’re not going to put up with these horrible prices much longer,” Trump said.
But OPEC doesn’t control prices, and often has little influence over them. Yet Trump has bought completely into the myth of OPEC’s power over prices.