FOREIGN POLICY/IRAN/NORTH KOREA/TRUMP AS PRESIDENT/UN: “President Donald Trump threatened to annihilate North Korea if the U.S. has to defend itself or its allies against the Pyongyang regime, delivering the dire warning Tuesday during his first address to the United Nations General Assembly.
Mr. Trump began his speech by espousing a form of international cooperation based on the nationalism that propelled his 2016 presidential campaign before using unusually blunt language for a U.N. address to weigh in on some of the world’s most intractable problems—first among them North Korea.
‘No nation on Earth has an interest in seeing this band of criminals arm itself with nuclear weapons and missiles,’ the president said, adding that denuclearization is the ‘only acceptable future’ for Kim Jong Un’s regime…
The GOP president also excoriated Iran, calling it an authoritarian regime and denouncing the 2015 nuclear disarmament agreement between Iran and six world powers, including the U.S…
Mr. Trump’s speech drew a mixed reaction from delegates. He received applause early in his speech for defining his ‘America first’ outlook as a way for independent, sovereign nations to cooperate. Israel, a close U.S. ally, applauded his stand on Iran…
But the antipathy Messrs. Trump and Netanyahu share toward the 2015 Iran nuclear agreement runs counter to the consensus among other world leaders, who see the agreement as working.”
-Eli Stokols and Farnaz Fassihi, “Trump Issues Dire Warning to North Korea in Address to U.N.,” The Wall Street Journal online, Sept. 19, 2017, 07:45pm