Trump Faces Skeptical UN Audience as Iran War Enters Seventh Month

When President Donald Trump addresses the United Nations on Tuesday, he will confront an audience of world leaders whose confidence in Washington has been shaken by a war with Iran now in its seventh month, growing regional instability, and a nuclear threat that has not been eliminated despite his earlier claims of success.

A year ago, Trump used the same platform to describe the US bombing of Iran's nuclear sites as having "totally obliterated everything," and to present himself as a peacemaker who had ended a 12-day war between Israel and Iran. Events since then have diverged sharply from that account. Trump joined Israel in striking Iran on February 28, citing an imminent nuclear threat, a claim experts have disputed. Tehran has always denied seeking a nuclear weapon.

Although Iran has been battered militarily and economically, it remains defiant. It has obstructed oil shipments through the Strait of Hormuz, and in recent days its Houthi allies in Yemen have tightened their grip on a Red Sea chokepoint, pushing global energy prices higher. The Houthis' rapid advance — overcoming Saudi-backed Yemeni government forces, sweeping down the Red Sea coast and seizing islands at the mouth of the Bab el-Mandeb Strait — has dealt a blow to Saudi Arabia and exposed the limits of Washington's ability to protect its regional partners.

Most European and Asian allies have declined Trump's requests for assistance in a conflict he launched without consulting them and which has damaged their economies. With US gasoline prices high and his approval ratings low, the president could face consequences in November's midterm elections, when Republican control of Congress is at stake.

"We are seeing what happens when a president launches a war of choice without anticipating the unintended consequences," said Aaron David Miller, a former adviser on Middle East policy to Republican and Democratic administrations.

The conflict has hardened into an uneasy stalemate that has failed to achieve Trump's shifting goals while depleting Pentagon missile stockpiles. Iran has retained a stockpile of near-weapons-grade highly enriched uranium believed buried by US strikes in June 2025. White House spokeswoman Anna Kelly said Trump alone had "possessed the courage" to confront Iran over its nuclear program, that he had achieved all his objectives, and that Iran's economy was being crippled by sanctions and a US maritime blockade.

Trump has rebuffed Saudi pleas for direct military intervention against the Houthis, who agreed to a ceasefire with the US last year. The refusal has dented confidence in US security guarantees among Gulf states, whose doubts were already fed by Trump's decision to go to war over their objections. He plans to meet Gulf leaders on the UN sidelines next week.

The dilemma for Trump is that while the US can ill afford to have the Houthis close a second major shipping corridor, he is reluctant to undertake a dangerous new mission for a military stretched by the fighting against Iran. US officials met the Houthis last weekend in Oman, where the group said that while it was targeting Saudi shipping it had no intention of attacking American vessels, according to five people familiar with the matter.

"The US clearly has (military) capacity challenges but even so the cost of inaction here is likely to intensify tensions among Gulf allies," said Jonathan Panikoff, a former deputy national intelligence officer on the Middle East.

Trump, who has offered shifting timelines, told reporters on Wednesday that "hopefully we are towards the end." But analysts warn the conflict is likely to drag on well past the midterm elections.

"Iran isn't about to let him off the hook here while they have so much leverage to damage him in the midterms and make him a lame duck," Brett Erickson, a geopolitical analyst and managing principal at Obsidian Risk Advisors, wrote on X.