UN Summit Takeaways

By Mihailo S. Zekic • September 23, 2026

The United Nations General Assembly opened yesterday with the traditional speeches by world leaders on how to tackle the world’s problems. Some points of note:

Iran decision-point: United States President Donald Trump said he was weighing whether to “annihilate” Iran to finish his war. Meanwhile, on the sidelines of the same event, his peace envoys Steve Witkoff and Jared Kushner negotiated with Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi, mediated by the prime minister of Qatar, the first Iran-U.S. meeting since June. A deal is still his preference because America lacks the will to carry out the threat to “annihilate” Iran.

A UN first: Iranian President Masoud Pezeshkian attended the General Assembly. This is believed to be the first time the U.S. has allowed the leader of a country it is at war with to attend the meeting.

The future of AI: As concerns of the danger and difficulty of controlling artificial intelligence mount, President Trump said he “totally rejects” any idea of global controls over the development of what he called “super intelligence.” AI magnates Sam Altman, Dario Amodei and Clement Delangue will attend today’s emergency meeting of the United Nations Security Council.

Nuclear inconsistency: Japanese Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi said Japan, as “the only country to have ever suffered atomic bombings during war,” has a “mission” to help build a “world without nuclear weapons.” This has been a major UN goal for decades. Yet Takaichi’s plea comes as the U.S., which hosts the UN headquarters, assists countries like Saudi Arabia and Syria with nuclear programs that many worry could be weaponized.

World leaders founded the United Nations in 1945 to prevent the next world war and lead the world toward peace. Herbert W. Armstrong, editor in chief of our predecessor magazine, the Plain Truth, attended its founding conference and judged that the UN “was destined from its inception to end in total failure.”

Over 80 years later, the General Assembly’s opening again demonstrates how far short it falls from fulfilling its mission. The chapter “The Disunited Nations” in our free booklet He Was Right shows how Mr. Armstrong knew this would happen and what the UN’s future holds.