Iran’s president used the United Nations General Assembly rostrum to deliver a blunt message to Washington, insisting his country will not be intimidated by US pressure and warning that sanctions will only harden Iran’s resolve.
“(US President Donald Trump) must know that the resistance of the Iranian people will only increase in the face of sanctions, increased pressure, increased bullying. We will never bow our head or bend at the knee,” President Masoud Pezeshkian said.
In his address, Mr Pezeshkian said Iran would not capitulate in its war with the United States, while arguing diplomacy remained the route he believed could bring the conflict to an end.
The US delegation walked out at the start of President Pezeshkian’s speech.
The US mission to the UN did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
Masoud Pezeshkian also held up a poster of assassinated Supreme Leader of Iran Ali Khamenei
Attention in his remarks also turned to the Strait of Hormuz — a vital passage that carried a fifth of global oil and liquefied natural gas before the war — which has become a central flashpoint between Tehran and Washington.
“It cannot be the case that everyone benefits from the Strait of Hormuz while we are denied access to shipping through this waterway,” Mr Pezeshkian said.
“The permanent deployment of hostile fleets and the expansion of the war will not lead to peace.”
Calling the conflict forced upon Iran, Mr Pezeshkian said the country had not been the instigator of wars, in what marked his first UN appearance since the US attacked the Islamic republic.
“Iran has never ever been an aggressor, has never started a war and has always shown her commitment to the negotiating table. They imposed the war on us, but we proved that we’re not afraid of fighting,” he said.
During the speech, the Iranian president held up a poster of a school in Minab where more than 150 people were killed during US attacks on Iran in February.
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A UN fact-finding mission on Iran said it had reasonable grounds to believe the US was behind two military strikes on the school and sports facility in Minab, and that these constituted war crimes.
He also held up a photo of former supreme leader Ali Khamenei, who was killed in a US attack in February.
Mr Pezeshkian addressed the 193-member General Assembly a day after US President Donald Trump spoke.
Mr Trump used his speech to make the case for his war on Iran, arguing he has prevented Tehran from obtaining a nuclear weapon and warning that he could “annihilate the Islamic Republic” if no deal is reached to end the conflict.
All but one member of the Iranian delegation walked out during Donald Trump’s speech
On the sidelines of the UN’s flagship diplomatic gathering, Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi met Mr Trump’s envoy Steve Witkoff and son-in-law Jared Kushner.
Mr Araghchi said that Iran’s demands included “the immediate lifting of the (US) naval blockade, the prompt payment of all Iranian assets that have been frozen, and an end to the war on all resistance fronts”, state news agency IRIB reported.
Outside the UN yesterday, there was a vigil with protesters demonstrating against Iran’s use of the death penalty.
Ukraine, AI showdown dominate proceedings
Even as Middle East tensions dominated debate, Russia’s war against Ukraine is again set to loom large in diplomatic discussions.
A Security Council meeting on Ukraine is scheduled for 4pm Irish time, while President Volodymyr Zelensky is due to address the UN General Assembly as well.
Mr Zelensky, after meeting Mr Trump yesterday, said that the US and Ukraine want the war with Russia to end “before winter”.
He added that he is ready to halt strikes on Russian energy sites if Russia agreed to do the same.
The future of artificial intelligence has also dominated the UN gathering of world leaders.
After weeks of global attention on fears of uncontrollable AI — and calls for a slowdown — industry leaders are set to brief an emergency meeting of the UN Security Council.
US President Donald Trump met Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelensky on the sidelines
Sam Altman of OpenAI, Dario Amodei of Anthropic and Clement Delangue of Hugging Face will brief the 15-strong council, the United Nation’s top body.
Hugging Face, a repository of AI models, was the target of a recent cyberattack by autonomous OpenAI software, the first in a series of incidents that have raised alarm bells over the rapidly evolving technology.
In his speech, Mr Trump rejected international regulation of AI, calling such proposals a “globalist scheme”.
“The very same people who said we’ll all be dead in 12 years because of global warming… are now saying that AI is going to kill us all,” Mr Trump said.
But within hours of Mr Trump’s remarks, French President Emmanuel Macron took the stage and pushed back, urging the creation of an open-source AI model that would not depend on the United States or China.
“I don’t want anyone to become the vassal of one of the great powers. Rather, we must come together to build an open-source frontier model, a cutting-edge model,” he said.
‘To the victor belong the spoils’ – Trump on Venezuela deal
Mr Trump and Venezuela’s interim leader Delcy Rodriguez met in person for the first time yesterday and discussed energy and security, she said.
Ms Rodriguez, who is set to address the UN General Assembly today, is the first Venezuelan head of state to visit since deposed president Nicolas Maduro was captured in a US military raid in January.
She described the meeting on the sidelines of the assembly in the US as “historic” in a message on X, posted alongside a photo of the two leaders smiling.
Sostuvimos una histórica reunión con el presidente de los Estados Unidos, Donald Trump, con quien conversamos sobre el fortalecimiento de la relación bilateral entre nuestros países y el avance de una agenda de cooperación en áreas estratégicas como energía, minería, seguridad pic.twitter.com/pyJ6FnQkBH
— Delcy Rodríguez (@delcyrodriguezv) September 23, 2026
She said they discussed “strengthening the bilateral relationship between our countries and moving forward with a cooperation agenda in strategic areas such as energy, mining, and security”.
Several US officials attended the meeting in addition to Mr Trump, including top advisor Stephen Miller, chief of staff Susie Wiles, Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent and Secretary of State Marco Rubio, a White House official said.
Ms Rodriguez was Venezuela’s vice president under Mr Maduro, but has so far cooperated with US demands, including granting the US access to Venezuela’s vast oil reserves, the largest in the world.
Mr Trump mentioned Venezuela during his address at the UN yesterday, saying: “When you add the United States and Venezuela together, we have more than 60% of the oil in the world.”
“To the victor belong the spoils,” he added.
