IRAN/OIL/SAUDI ARABIA/TRUMP AS PRESIDENT/UN: “President Trump delivered a sharp nationalist message and assailed ‘globalists’ in remarks to the world’s leading international body on Tuesday [9-24-19], while stopping short of urging any specific action against Iran for a major attack on Saudi oil facilities that his administration has said was Tehran’s responsibility…The United Nations was founded in 1945 to foster international cooperation and to ‘take effective collective measures’ to keep the peace after the nationalist fervor that had plunged the globe into World War II. But Mr. Trump, who spoke in an unusually flat monotone as he read from a teleprompter, stressed the value of national identity and argued that governments must defend their “history, culture and heritage’…Just as notable as his challenge to many of the world body’s principles was what Mr. Trump did not say. Before an audience that had been primed for him to build on the American argument that Iran was behind the attacks on Saudi oil facilities, Mr. Trump said relatively little about this month’s strikes.”
–Michael Crowley and David E. Sanger, “Trump Celebrates Nationalism in U.N. Speech and Plays Down Iran Crisis,” The New York Times online, September 24, 2019