1. No bending the knee for Iran
Iran’s president, Masoud Pezeshkian, balanced defiance against the US with an openness to dialogue, in an address that had been in doubt as it was unclear he would be issued a visa to enter the country.
“We have only defended ourselves. We are not terrorists,” he said. “Our innocent people have been the targets of cowardly attacks and aggressions imposed upon our country.”
Referring to the United States, Pezeshkian added: “Yes, they did hit us, but we did not bend the knee.” The US delegation walked out of the room.
At the podium, Pezeshkian held up images of children killed in the strike on a school in Minab, which a UN fact-finding mission had found “reasonable grounds” to say was carried out by the US.
Despite Donald Trump’s earlier public musings on whether to “annihilate the Islamic Republic”, the US president said there had been a “very good” meeting on the fate of the strait of Hormuz between Tehran’s foreign minister, Abbas Araghchi, and US envoys Steve Witkoff and Jared Kushner.
2. Xi Jinping gives it a miss
The biggest thing not happening at the UN general assembly could well be any involvement by Xi Jinping.
Amid crises in Ukraine and the Middle East that have seen Beijing accused of being at best unhelpful, Donald Trump rolled out a 100ft red carpet to personally meet his counterpart at Joint Base Andrews instead of the White House, a move not seen for decades.
The two will talk about AI, trade and Taiwan during a state dinner and tea, but China will be represented at the UNGA by vice-president Han Zheng.
On his arrival, Xi said “our two countries should be partners rather than rivals”, according to state news agency Xinhua, and a modest extension of their trade truce was announced, but expectations of a big breakthrough are low.
3. ‘Today, Venezuela is being reborn’
Venezuela’s interim president described the “rebirth” of her country, as she addressed for the UN for the first time since the abduction of her old boss on the orders of Trump.
Delcy Rodríguez, speaking as Nicolás Maduro languished in a prison nearly in Brooklyn, promised elections at an undisclosed point in the future and said her government had started a “political dialogue with opposition sectors”.
Earlier, she had watched as Trump defended the US intervention in her country, saying: “It was a war … [and] to the victor belong the spoils”, an allusion to the controversial 65bn-barrel oil deal she agreed, which the president called “the largest oil deal in history”.
4. ‘Russia’s revenues must remain a target’
As the war grinds towards its fifth winter, Ukraine’s president was clear-eyed about how to hurt Russia: hit the Kremlin’s coffers. “Russia’s revenues must remain a target,” Volodymyr Zelenskyy told the assembly.
“When someone gives Russia more money through trade, they give this war more time. And that is exactly why we insist on limiting trade with the aggressor, and why we are burning Russia’s revenues ourselves,” he said.
The president flagged that the upcoming winter could be “very harsh for us”, given the annual onslaught against its energy infrastructure, but warned that Kyiv could “make it painful for Russia too”.
Ukraine has used long-range drones to strike Russian warehouses, port infrastructure and oil refineries, but Trump has pressed Zelenskyy to “stop knocking out diesel fuel in Russia” because it was causing a global shortage.
Although Russian president Vladimir Putin is not at the UN, Trump has invited him to December’s G20 in Miami, which would mark a significant step in welcoming Putin back on to the world stage.
5. Coming up … Netanyahu
New York is bracing for protests, both in the assembly hall and on the streets, when Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu speaks on Thursday against a background of growing international condemnation, most recently over violence by Israeli settlers in the West Bank.
New York mayor Zohran Mamdani told demonstrators this week he would protect their “right to [protest] in this city” but tempered his earlier promises to arrest Netanyahu as a war criminal.
Palestinian representatives are calling for diplomatic missions to bring staff for a planned walkout of Netanyahu’s speech.
Netanyahu is expected to deliver a hardline message aimed not just at world leaders, but also to his own electorate in Israel ahead of elections next month.
Trump and top US officials are not expected to meet Netanyahu, but will be listening carefully to his words – 60% of American Jews in a poll released this week hope Netanyahu is voted out in October.
