ANJALI KAMAT: At the United Nations General Assembly on Tuesday, Secretary-General António Guterres reiterated his call for peace in the Middle East.

SECRETARY-GENERAL ANTÓNIO GUTERRES: Across the Middle East, conflicts are cascading. So-called ceasefires have amounted to little more than lesser fires, with civilians continuing to pay the price. Enough is enough. I appeal to the leaders in this chamber to maximize this high-level week for deescalation and dialogue. And together, let’s send a clear message from this hall: The fighting must stop.

AMY GOODMAN: Shortly after the secretary-general spoke before the United Nations General Assembly, President Trump took to the stage and openly threatened to annihilate Iran.

PRESIDENT DONALD TRUMP: But I have a big decision to make: 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, never giving them a chance to kill and destroy people and countries again? Do I drive them into hell with no chance of survival and no hope of future greatness or generations? But I believe we’ll make a deal right after the election, because it doesn’t make sense for them not to. They’re waiting to see how I do in the midterm election. What they don’t realize is that I’m not running. 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.

ANJALI KAMAT: Trump’s remarks came as U.S. and Iranian officials met privately for three hours on the sidelines of the General Assembly. Trump’s son-in-law Jared Kushner and his Middle East envoy Steve Witkoff took part in the talks. Iran’s President Masoud Pezeshkian told reporters that Iran is wary of further negotiations, having twice been attacked by the U.S. and Israel in the middle of talks. Pezeshkian will be addressing the United Nations today.

During his speech on Tuesday, President Trump also boasted about seizing Venezuela’s oil after the U.S. attacked Venezuela and abducted President Nicolás Maduro and his wife

PRESIDENT DONALD TRUMP: We signed the largest oil deal in history, covering 65 billion barrels of oil, which will benefit both Venezuela and the United States enormously and help drive down the cost of energy all over the world. And that is starting to perk right now. It’s coming out. The biggest oil companies in the world are going in, and the numbers are absolutely incredible. When you add the United States and Venezuela together, we have more than 60% of the oil in the world. So it’s perhaps the biggest deal. It was a war, but it’s perhaps the biggest deal ever made. To the victor belong the spoils. You’ve all heard that.

AMY GOODMAN: Well, for more on Trump’s U.N. speech, we’re joined now by Trita Parsi, executive vice president of the Quincy Institute for Responsible Statecraft.

Trita, welcome to our studio here in New York, your first time here, as you deal with the U.N. General Assembly this week. Can you first start off by talking about Trump’s threat to annihilate Iran?

TRITA PARSI: This is unfortunately the language that Trump keeps on using. I think, in his mind, it gives him the impression or leaves the impression that he’s in control of the situation, that he’s dictating terms, that he is winning. I don’t think that is how it is read by others. I think the Iranians see this, and I think they said so as much, that this is a sign of his desperation, because seven months into this war, there still is no exit, and Trump is increasingly facing what could end up becoming an endless war. And he has not achieved a single one of his strategic objectives. And the more the situation gets bad, the harsher his rhetoric tends to become. But this is probably a new low in U.N. history to actually have a president, a head of state, threatening the annihilation of another regime at the podium in the General Assembly.

ANJALI KAMAT: And, Trita, just a few hours after making these comments threatening to annihilate Iran, President Trump also told reporters that his negotiating team had a very good three-hour meeting with the Iranian team. What do we know about that meeting? What was discussed?

TRITA PARSI: So, this is something that the Qataris, in particular, had worked very, very hard to broker. It was an indirect meeting, so they were not sitting in the same room, even though they had been in the past. So, there is a slight return to diplomacy, but it is not at the same level as it was before, in which the two sides were talking directly to each other. But it is nevertheless an important attempt of bringing the two sides back to the table.

But it does not appear to have generated any real breakthrough. The two sides are too far away from each other on substantive issues, it appears. Nevertheless, attempts of this kind are very important. They have to be made. You’re not going to have a breakthrough unless you try some of these small steps. But I do fear that, to a certain extent, this is also in order to give the impression that more is happening diplomatically than it actually is because of the impact it has on the markets, because expectations it sets for the midterm elections. But in reality, in terms of substance, I’m not seeing any breakthrough, not quite yet.

ANJALI KAMAT: The Iranian president is expected to address the United Nations General Assembly today. What do you think he’s going to be talking about? And what exactly is happening in the Strait of Hormuz?

TRITA PARSI: So, in the Strait of Hormuz, you do have a situation in which the United States has managed to open up the southern channel, in which more oil is flowing now than it did during the MOU, or at least in the early days of the MOU. This, I think, has led to a scenario in which the United States thinks that the tables have been turned, that the pressure is much higher on Iran now than it is on the global economy. To a certain extent, that is true, but here’s the problem: It is not a stable situation.

If these new sanctions that Trump is pushing for, including this opening in the strait, actually really ends up putting a lot of pressure on the Iranians, what you’re most likely to see in that scenario is that the Iranians will counter-escalate. The United States is currently escalating. It is trying to ban all airplanes from landing in Iran or all Iranian airlines from being able to go to other places. These are clear escalations of added pressure. And if those end up biting, the Iranians will counter-escalate.

So we’re not in a situation in which the United States is putting added pressure on a country that has run out of options. It’s adding pressure on a country that has plenty of escalatory options, and most of those are very dangerous for the region and for the United States itself. And as a result, this trajectory is one of escalation, despite that meeting that took place yesterday.

AMY GOODMAN: It was quite something to hear President Trump say, essentially, the U.S. has obliterated Iran’s military, the Navy. He claimed Operation Midnight Hammer obliterated Iran’s nuclear program, so wiping out everything. Yet, then, why is — well, according to polls in the United States across the political spectrum, people perceive the U.S. is losing against Iran. And what don’t we know about the level of devastation of U.S. bases throughout the Middle East right now?

TRITA PARSI: I think the American public actually sees reality for what it is, and it is a situation in which the United States, after seven months of fighting, have not been able to achieve any of its objectives and, even more importantly, finding an exit out of this war. So, all of this talk about destroying their Navy, etc., there are tactical operational successes that the United States has had; none of them have translated into a strategic victory. And even this latest maneuver, in which the U.S. thinks that he has managed to get an edge over the Iranians in terms of leverage, which to a certain extent may be true, is nevertheless a tactical edge, not a strategic edge. And this constant confusing, deliberate confusing, between what is tactical and strategic is what has really characterized how the administration has approached this.

Now, when it comes to the U.S. bases, General David Petraeus, former head of the CIA, himself admitted that the Iranians have made a majority of American bases in the region inoperable. The United States is actually not even operating out of a lot of these bases at this point because of the success and effectiveness of the Iranian missiles and the lack of effectiveness of the missile defense. The U.S. is running out of interceptors, etc. So the picture on the ground is dramatically different from what the president is conveying.

ANJALI KAMAT: Trita, Trump claimed in his speech that Iran is watching the midterms very closely. What is Iran’s calculation if the Democrats end up winning? And what do you think the Democrats should do on Iran if they do win?

TRITA PARSI: I think the Iranians are looking at the midterms, but it’s not that decisive moment necessarily that earlier was thought. I think the Iranians are also understanding that if Trump loses in the elections both the House and the Senate, he will be in a much more desperate situation. He will be facing domestic pressure, perhaps impeachment efforts. And that may very well end up causing him to lash out even more on the foreign policy front. Instead of that constraining him, it actually may further radicalize his policies. So, I don’t think they’re looking at the midterms necessarily as something that is some sort of a decisive blow towards Trump, and as a result, things wind down.

Now, I do believe that the Democrats could do far more in terms of putting pressure to stop this war, stop the funding of this war. Now there’s efforts in terms of war powers, etc. Some of them have been successful. But at the end of the day, it’s the power of the purse. And also, when the MOU was signed, however imperfect it may have been, I found it tremendously problematic that many of the Democrats were choosing to attack the MOU in a manner that could have led, and eventually did lead, not necessarily because of their attacks, to the MOU collapsing. And what did that do? It brought us back into war. So, you have to really decide. If you’re against this war, you have to support the efforts that ends these wars, whether those are perfect or not, and save the political scores later on until we’re completely safe, out of the woods, and we don’t have a fear of a return to military action.

AMY GOODMAN: Where does China fit into this picture? A lot is being made of President Trump’s meeting with Xi this week in New York. Whether we’ll get to hear what they say is another story, because the pool, the media pool, has said they won’t operate, in solidarity with the networks that have been banned from the White House. CNN is part of the pool, and so they’re just saying, “We won’t record.”

TRITA PARSI: The meeting tomorrow is going to be very important. The United States is going to try to press the Chinese to go along with extraterritorial sanctions as part of this economic warfare that the administration is now waging and escalating. I find it unlikely —

AMY GOODMAN: The U.S. almost bombed a Chinese ship. Is that right? And then at the last minute, as they were ready to bomb this Chinese ship, saying that they had intelligence that it was bringing weapons or nuclear material to Iran, realized it was based on AI that was false.

TRITA PARSI: Exactly, and we’ve already seen mistakes be committed because of this overreliance on AI. The AI program that was developed by Palantir is partly responsible for the bombing of the girls’ school in Minab that left 150-plus children dead. During the first round of the war back in March, I spoke to a person in Iran who said that it appears that AI is being used for a lot of the targeting decisions. For instance, there was a period in that war in which the United States and Israel were specifically targeting police stations. This was during the phase in which I think the United States and Israel hoped that by destroying the security forces in the city, it would lead to riots and an overthrow of the government. But it also led to them bombing twice a park that is called Park Police, Pārk-e Pelis in Persian, had nothing to do with the police, but because of the name “police” is in the name of the park, it was targeted. And it appears to have been yet another one of these examples in which the AI is selecting the targets without any human oversight to just double-check, triple-check if this is valid or not. And you just raised the worst example so far in terms of actually a potential war between the U.S. and China.

Now, it’s interesting. The Chinese at some point may decide that they might want to get in and try to see if they can help bring this war to an end. It’s not usually what they want to do. Their instincts are to stay out. But if this situation escalates further, to the point in which the Chinese cannot insulate themselves and the global economy from the repercussions, the Chinese calculation may change. And it may also come as a result of the pressure that the U.S. is putting on the Chinese to go along with sanctions that they absolutely do not want to implement.

ANJALI KAMAT: And the significance, Trita, you know, when President Trump was talking about Venezuela, of his comment saying, “To the victor belongs the spoils,” speaking to the U.N. General Assembly?

TRITA PARSI: Yes, it’s really important to understand this point here. The entire U.N. system was built upon the ashes of the world after World War II, in which it was deemed critical by all of the states that we need to move towards a different type of a system in which warfare should not pay off, in which the victors do not go — the spoils do not go to the victor, because there shouldn’t be any benefit in waging wars, particularly the wars of aggression and wars of choice. So, for him to come with that statement, that probably is mainly meant to play well with a specific audience at home, nevertheless sends a strong message to the rest of the world that the United States, at least currently, does not even deem the most basic principles of international law as something that is worthy to uphold.

AMY GOODMAN: Trita Parsi, executive vice president of the Quincy Institute for Responsible Statecraft.

Coming up, Senator Bernie Sanders gave a major address this week at the historic Riverside Church in New York on war, oligarchy and the dangers of AI. Stay with us.

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AMY GOODMAN: “Tocando” by Helado Tropical, a new collaboration by Helado Negro and Reyna Tropical.