WASHINGTON — I’m back from a week covering the United Nations General Assembly in New York, where leaders from around the world brought their domestic fights to the international stage and tried to explain why the rest of us should care.

President Trump offered the clearest example. His warning that he could “annihilate the Islamic Republic” made headlines, as you would expect. But the part of his speech I keep coming back to was his prediction that a deal with Iran could come after the November midterm elections.

Trump said Tehran was waiting to see how he performs at the polls — something I’ve been flagging for months.

That is a remarkable timeline to put before the world while the United States remains at war. Trump is arguing that Iran believes it can hold out until American politics changes its negotiating position.

My read is that he’s telling Tehran that its bet will fail: Wait for the election if you want, but do not expect him to abandon his strategy simply because the calendar turns to November.

Whether that produces a deal is another question. Trump’s prediction is still a prediction, and the distance between the two sides was on display when Iranian President Masoud Pezeshkian addressed the General Assembly.

He presented Iran as a country standing up to American pressure while maintaining that it remained open to talks. But being open to talks is the easy part. An agreement would require concessions from both sides, and neither leader’s public language made those concessions sound close.

If I were a mediator listening to talk of “annihilation” on one side and refusing to bend on the other, I would be nervous. Those words play well to audiences at home. They leave much less room for the people trying to get an agreement across the table.

That’s why Pakistani Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif’s appearance mattered. Pakistan helped bring the United States and Iran into talks in Islamabad, and its government has continued to press for diplomacy and implementation of the Islamabad Memorandum of Understanding.

The memorandum did not end the war. Still, getting two parties this far apart to agree to something on paper was an accomplishment, and it is worth remembering when judging what Pakistan’s mediation achieved. pid.gov.pk

I attended the Islamabad talks, and I have heard the criticism that they did not deliver enough. There are plenty of criticisms to make.

But the question is what would have happened without a channel for the two sides to talk at all. Pakistan helped create one, and I doubt its work as a mediator is finished.

Sharif also used the international stage to raise a threat much closer to home: militancy along Pakistan’s border with Afghanistan. Five years after the United States left Afghanistan, the Taliban governs in Kabul, while Pakistan faces attacks by the Pakistani Taliban, a separate armed group. Islamabad says militants have operated from Afghan territory.

That is an allegation that deserves scrutiny, but the broader point should not disappear from Western attention: Leaving Afghanistan did not make the region’s security problems go away.

Then there was Ukraine. President Volodymyr Zelensky called Vladimir Putin “Patient Zero,” describing him as the source from which the idea of war keeps spreading. It was an arresting metaphor, and he used it to argue that giving Putin more space to act would bring more instability beyond Ukraine.

Zelensky’s “Patient Zero” line landed in the same week Taylor Swift released a song with that exact title. Her new music video tells a different story, but there is a strong analogy.

In the video, Swift plays a woman who has already experienced a destructive relationship, while another woman becomes involved with the same man. She recognizes the pattern and tries to warn her.

I know, I know — a Taylor Swift video is a strange place to take a discussion about Putin. But it gets at what Zelensky was trying to tell the room. Ukraine knows what it is like to live with the consequences of Putin’s decisions.

When Zelensky calls him “Patient Zero,” he is telling other leaders: We have seen what this man does. Please believe us before you invite him any closer.

The timing sharpened his point in another way, as Trump last week invited Putin to the G20 summit in Miami this December.

Trump’s approach to diplomacy often starts with bringing an adversary into the room and seeing whether a relationship can move negotiations forward. Zelensky’s warning was that Putin could use that room, too.

That is the argument running through these speeches. Trump thinks Iran may come to a deal once its hoped-for political opening passes. Iran wants to show it cannot be forced into one.

Pakistan wants the world to recognize that even an incomplete agreement can matter. Zelensky wants leaders to consider what an invitation gives Putin before they offer it.

At the UN, each leader was speaking to the people in the hall, but also to audiences at home and to the adversaries watching from elsewhere.

The loudest line was rarely the whole message. Trump’s threat drew the headline. His midterm timeline told us more about how he thinks this war might end.

UNITED NATIONS — Sometimes the most revealing part of a presidential speech is not the line everyone quotes — it’s where the camera turns.

As President Trump began criticizing Iran during his address to the United Nations General Assembly on Tuesday, the broadcast cut away from the podium and panned toward the Iranian delegation.

Only one man was sitting there.

The rest of the delegation had stood up and walked out as Trump began describing the last six months of US military action against Tehran, according to sources in the room. One representative stayed behind, apparently to watch the rest.

It was a classic bit of diplomatic theater. Delegations frequently register their objections at the United Nations not by staying away completely, but by showing up long enough to make sure the world watches them leave.

It is protest by choreography — and, yes, there is something a little gossipy about watching it happen in real time. The camera operator clearly understood the moment: Trump pivots to Iran, the shot tilts to the Tehran delegation and almost nobody is left in the seats.

Then came the line that was destined for the headlines.

“I have a big decision to make,” Trump said. “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?”

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

Once a president starts talking about “annihilation,” there is no tidy military definition to hide behind. It is not a description of a specific target set or articulated end state. It is maximalist language, deliberately left broad enough to communicate something larger and more frightening than another round of strikes.

It is also unmistakably Trump.

The wording recalled his warning in April that “a whole civilization will die” if Iran refused to make a deal, as well as an Easter message threatening Iranian infrastructure and telling Tehran to open the Strait of Hormuz or “you’ll be living in Hell.”

Tuesday’s language was not an isolated verbal flourish. It belonged to a pattern: Trump offers Iran a spectacularly prosperous future if it agrees to his demands, then describes catastrophic consequences if it does not.

For Trump, the offer and the threat are not contradictory. The threat is what he believes gives the offer force.

That is why the next section of the speech mattered just as much as “annihilation,” even if it generated fewer instant headlines.

Trump said he believes Iran is delaying an agreement because its leaders are waiting to see whether Republicans suffer in the November midterm elections.

“What they don’t realize is that I’m not running,” Trump said. “I did that already and won in a landslide. We won in a giant landslide, and I’ll be here for two and a half years.”

“I gave absolutely no credence and will not give credence to the election when it comes to Iran. It doesn’t even enter my mind. The only thing that does is that Iran will never have a nuclear weapon.”

This is something I’ve been emphasizing for months in international media appearances, including during my reporting trip to Pakistan in April.

Again and again, I was asked whether the political cost of the war—and the possibility of Republicans losing ground in the midterms—would force Trump to end it or substantially change course.

My answer has been consistent: Trump cares about the midterms. He wants Republicans to win. Other officials in his administration and members of Congress are plainly concerned about how an unpopular war, higher energy costs and public frustration could affect the election.

But that does not mean Trump views the midterms as the deciding factor in his Iran policy.

To understand his decision-making, foreign governments have to begin with how he defines the threat. Trump has spent years saying that preventing an Iranian nuclear weapon is one of his paramount national-security objectives. If he believes that requires continuing the war, he’s not going to reverse course just because the politics have become unpopular.

That’s not to say domestic politics have no influence on the administration. Presidents do not operate in a vacuum. Congressional pressure, public opinion, economic disruption, military resources and divisions among advisers can all constrain what is possible. A change in control of Congress could create new investigations, funding fights and political obstacles for the White House.

But Tehran may be making a serious miscalculation if it assumes a poor Republican performance in November will cause Trump himself to abandon his core demand.

In true Trump fashion, his message at the UN was almost pointedly personal: The election may change Congress, but it does not remove him from the Oval Office. He will still control the executive branch, still serve as commander in chief and still have more than two years remaining in his term.

That matters because Iran appears to be betting — at least in part — on time. (I spoke about this with Behnam Ben Taleblu with Foundation for Defense of Democracies on The Correspondent Podcast earlier this month.)

The war is politically unpopular in the United States as its effects have reached energy markets and American consumers. But if Tehran believes domestic pressure will eventually force Washington to soften its terms, they may need to reconsider just who the president is.

Trump used the world’s largest diplomatic stage to tell Iran that calculation is wrong.

Whether his actions after the midterms match his rhetoric remains an open question. Trump can change tactics quickly. But foreign leaders cannot afford to dismiss such declarations, particularly when they fit the pattern of how he has approached the issue for years.

The most revealing part of Tuesday’s speech therefore was not only the extremity of the threat, but the time horizon Trump attached to it.

Iran’s diplomats could walk out. Democrats could win in November. Public pressure could grow. None of that, Trump was saying, should be confused with an expiration date on his Iran policy.

The lonely figure left behind in Iran’s section may have been the most important person in the delegation by the end of the speech. Someone had to remain in the room to hear that message — and take it back to Tehran.

Kabul's Taliban spokesperson Zabihullah Mujahid tells Al Arabiya English that the organization doesn't "allow" the Tehrik-e Taliban Pakistan (TTP) to launch attacks on Pakistan from Afghanistan — but what are they actually doing about it?There’s a big difference between saying you “do not allow” TTP in Afghanistan and actually doing something about it. I can say I don’t allow bugs in my house, but if I don’t squash them when they appear, is it really true?

It’s been more than six months of the US-Iran war. How long can Tehran keep fighting — and how long can Washington keep up the pressure?

On this episode of The Correspondent Podcast, Caitlin Doornbos sits down with Foundation for Defense of Democracies Iran expert Behnam Ben Taleblu to unpack the strategy behind the US-Iran conflict. We discuss Iran’s efforts to buy time through diplomacy and escalation, the impact of Trump’s sanctions and blockade on Iranian oil exports, and the risk that growing economic pressure could push Tehran to widen the war.

We also look at the Strait of Hormuz, Iran’s regional proxies, attacks on US and Gulf targets, and the bigger question hanging over the conflict: who benefits if this becomes a war of attrition?

Welcome to the very first episode of The Correspondent. I’m Caitlin Doornbos.

If you’ve followed my reporting over the years, you know I’ve spent a lot of time covering American foreign policy from the Pentagon, the State Department and the White House — but also from the places where those decisions actually land.

That’s what I want this show to be about: not just telling you what happened, but taking you beyond the headlines to explain what it means, what the people making these decisions are actually trying to accomplish, and what we should be watching next.

So I doubt there could be a better story to start with.

On Sunday, President Trump’s two top diplomats on all things peace — Steve Witkoff and Jared Kushner — traveled to Kyiv for the first time, meeting with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy after months of diplomacy conducted largely everywhere but Ukraine.

Witkoff and Kushner arrived in Kyiv by train a day after visiting Moscow, where they spent more than three hours on Saturday behind closed doors with Russian dictator Vladimir Putin. They came out of those meetings talking about new ideas, substantive discussions and the possibility of moving toward a deal.

But there’s still one enormous problem: Russia and Ukraine remain very far apart on what ending this war actually looks like. And positions don’t seem to have changed much since the last big diplomatic push nine months ago.

So, what happens now?

To help me break all of that down, I spoke with George Barros of the Institute for the Study of War, who has spent years closely tracking the battlefield, Russia’s military campaign and the Kremlin’s objectives in Ukraine.