Trump at the UN: Global leaders become desensitised to same old shock-and-awe tactics

This year, the teleprompter was working. This year, the United Nations escalator did not break down at the worst possible moment. A year on from his withering rebuke of the international postwar peace alliance, Donald Trump returned to the big, maudlin building on First Avenue with plenty to say. He championed the effectiveness of his war against Iran and asserted himself as the central figure as the United States seeks “to reshape the world stage and solve problems that have plagued us for far too long”.

With Iranian president Masoud Pezeshkian and Abbas Araghchi, its minister of foreign affairs, both in New York and an Iranian delegation in the assembly hall, Trump told world leaders he had arrived at a point where he faced a critical choice on Iran.