The annual meeting of the United Nations General Assembly opened this week in New York City. On its opening day, President Trump in his address to all 193 U.N. member states threatened to annihilate Iran.
Page A7From§Eachthe early evening edition — 27 September 2026
Trump rejects Iran's ceasefire, promises doomsday war, then books talks for this week anyway
As it ran on the front
I have defended stranger positions than this one, and the file from the last week is why.
Start at the UN, September 23. The president told the General Assembly he could annihilate Iran, and I typed "resolve" to describe it before I noticed the word does not fit a threat aimed at a country of ninety million people, so leave "resolve" out. That is the backdrop for everything that follows, because two days later, Friday, CBS taped an interview with Iran's president, Masoud Pezeshkian, that would not air until Sunday. In it he said he is open to letting international nuclear inspectors back into the country, though not under the framework built after the U.S. walked out of the 2015 deal. Asked whether he would release the Americans held wrongfully, he did not say yes. He said the previous way of doing it "didn't work." That is not a promise. It is the closest the week came to one, and I am filing it as such because that is the honest version.…
…(cont) Then Saturday, the president confirmed what his Treasury secretary had already promised days earlier — that Tehran would have nothing left to trade within two weeks — by rejecting the seven-day offer Iran had put on the table to reopen the Strait of Hormuz and return to talks. Except the thing being pressured just offered to open the strait and got told no, which makes the offer, not Iran, the thing that walked away first.
Sunday, one day later, Iran's foreign minister told NBC his country is "fully prepared" for what he called doomsday war if the president authorizes new strikes after the midterms. The same Sunday, CBS reported the president now expects talks to resume this week. Doomsday to resumption, one day, same news cycle — not a de-escalation earned over time, a scheduling change. Senator Mark Kelly's word for the president's position was "stuck," trying to get back to where the U.S. was before the war he started in February without, Kelly said, a strategic goal, a plan, or a timeline. I was going to argue Kelly has that backwards. He does not.
“You reject the ceasefire, you threaten doomsday, and forty-eight hours later you're back on the phone like nothing happened — that's not diplomacy, that's a man testing how far he can push before someone makes him stop. Nobody's stopping him. Congress hasn't taken a single vote on this whole war, so the only clock running is the one in his head, and he keeps resetting it.”
“Look, rejecting a ceasefire offer isn't the same as rejecting peace, it's called negotiating from strength, and — okay, rejecting the actual offer to reopen the strait and then getting doomsday war back is not what strength usually gets you, I'll grant that. But talks resuming days later, that's the plan working. That's not a plan, that's a coin flip that landed right this once, forget I said "working."”
Earlier in this story
- Treasury gives Iran two weeks to run out of trade; envoy blames Iran for wanting it up front. By Chip · the early bird edition, 27 September 2026
- Trump's ambassador blames Iran's 'everything up front' demand; it doesn't appear in Iran's own transcript. By Lou · the noon edition, 27 September 2026
- Trump rejects Iran's offer, brags about the three-hour meeting anyway, has Rubio call Iran miscalculating. By Lou · the coffee break edition, 27 September 2026
- President rejects Iran's seven-day offer to reopen the Strait and reschedules the bombing for after the midterms; his U.N. ambassador goes on Fox to say the $6.48 diesel came from Ukraine By Lou · the breakfast edition, 27 September 2026
The receipts
Iran had presented a seven-day plan to reopen the Strait of Hormuz and return to negotiations for a lasting end to the war.
Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi on Sunday said that his country is "fully prepared" for the conflict with the U.S. to resume if President Trump authorizes new strikes on the regime after the November midterm elections. Araghchi told NBC News's Kristen Welker in an interview on "Meet the Press" that the U.S.
In an interview with Margaret Brennan that was taped Friday, Brennan asked Iranian President Masoud Pezeshkian about whether he would release the Americans who have been determined to be wrongfully detained in Iran. Pezeshkian said "we tested it, and it didn't work" in previous deals.
Sen. Mark Kelly (D-Ariz.) on Sunday said President Trump is "stuck" with handling the U.S.-Israeli conflict with Iran and is seeking a path to "get back to where" the U.S. was before the war began in February.
Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi warned that Iran was prepared for a “doomsday war” after President Donald Trump rejected its ceasefire offer. Trump publicly confirmed that he rejected an Iranian ceasefire offer on Saturday, one that offered a halt on attacks on Strait of Hormuz shipping and a resumption of nuclear talks in return…
Trump promised to settle the Ukraine war within 24 hours on 53 separate occasions, CNN counted CNN fact check, 25 April 2025 (all 53 instances)
Iranian dissident reacts to Trump's promise to either annihilate Iran or make a post-election dealCBS News' Ed O'Keefe reports on President Trump's remarks at the United Nations, and Iranian-American activist and journalist Masih Alinejad shares her thoughts on Mr. Trump's war in the Middle East and the plight of the Iranian people.
In an interview with "Face the Nation with Margaret Brennan" on Friday, Iranian President Masoud Pezeshkian said that he is open to allowing international nuclear inspectors into Iran but not under the "existing framework" set up since the U.S. withdrew from the 2015 nuclear deal.
This page is a back-issue: the story as it ran, receipts as they were. The current edition is at the front. The byline is a pen name for a column drafted by a machine and checked by the editor: how this is made.