When President Donald Trump addressed the United Nations a year ago, he touted the US bombing of Iran’s nuclear sites just months earlier as having “totally obliterated everything” and claimed he had brought peace between Israel and Iran.
Returning to the world body on Tuesday, Trump will face a deeply sceptical audience increasingly rattled by six months of war between US forces and an emboldened Iran, growing regional instability and a nuclear threat that has not disappeared despite his claims.
Although battered militarily and economically, Tehran has remained defiant, obstructing oil shipments through the Strait of Hormuz. In recent days, its Houthi allies in Yemen have also gained new leverage by tightening their grip on a Red Sea chokepoint, further pushing up global energy prices.
The rapid advance by Houthi militants has put Trump in an increasingly difficult position over an unpopular conflict, dealt a blow to US ally Saudi Arabia and exposed limits on Washington’s ability to protect its regional partners.
Most European and Asian allies have rejected Trump’s demands for assistance in a conflict he launched without consulting them and which has had damaging economic consequences for their countries.
With US gasoline prices high and his approval ratings low, Trump could also face political consequences in November’s midterm elections, when his Republican Party’s 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 Middle East policy adviser to Republican and Democratic administrations.
In his speech to the annual gathering of world leaders in New York, Trump is likely to again portray as a victory a military campaign he had promised would be over within weeks.
Instead, the conflict has hardened into an uneasy stalemate that has failed to achieve Trump’s shifting objectives while depleting the Pentagon’s missile stockpiles.
Trump’s problems have deepened since Houthi fighters overcame Saudi-backed Yemeni government forces, sweeping down the Red Sea coast and seizing islands at the mouth of the Bab el-Mandeb Strait, a crucial shipping corridor through which Iran can further threaten global oil supplies.
In response to Reuters’ questions, a senior Trump administration official said the United States was focused on security interests such as ensuring freedom of navigation in the Red Sea while “empowering our regional partners to take the lead in managing and resolving regional security challenges.”
Iran occupied only a small portion of Trump’s speech at last year’s UN General Assembly.
He recounted how, three months earlier, he had sent B-2 bombers to drop 30,000-pound bombs that he said had “demolished” Tehran’s uranium enrichment capacity. Experts, however, determined that the strikes had seriously set back the programme rather than eliminate it.
“No other country on Earth could have done what we did,” Trump said.
The US president, who campaigned on a pledge to avoid foreign military entanglements, also presented himself as a peacemaker, repeating claims that he had ended conflicts around the world. He cited a 12-day war between Israel and Iran in 2025 and again insisted he deserved the Nobel Peace Prize.
Events since then have complicated that narrative.
Trump joined Israel in striking Iran on February 28, citing what he described as an imminent nuclear threat to the United States. Experts have disputed his claim that Iran was close to developing a nuclear weapon, something Tehran has consistently denied seeking.
Trump also underestimated Iran’s resilience, analysts say. Despite airstrikes that killed many of Iran’s senior leaders, Tehran has retaliated against Gulf neighbours and US bases they host.
Iran has also retained a stockpile of near-weapons-grade highly enriched uranium believed to have been buried and left intact after US strikes in June 2025.
White House spokeswoman Anna Kelly said Trump alone had “possessed the courage” to confront Iran over its nuclear programme. She said he had achieved all his objectives and that Iran’s economy was being crippled by intensified sanctions and a US maritime blockade.
Trump has meanwhile rejected Saudi pleas for direct US military intervention against the Houthis, who agreed to a ceasefire with Washington last year.
The decision has weakened confidence in US security guarantees among Gulf states, analysts say. Their concerns had already grown after Trump chose to go to war despite their objections. He plans to meet Gulf leaders on the sidelines of the UN gathering next week, Axios reported.
Trump faces a difficult choice: while the United States can ill afford to allow the Houthis to close another major shipping corridor, he is reluctant to launch a dangerous new military mission while US forces are already stretched by the war with Iran.
US officials met Houthi representatives in Oman last weekend. The group said it was targeting Saudi shipping but had no intention of attacking American vessels, according to five people familiar with the discussions.
“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 for the Middle East.
The Houthis’ sudden emergence as a major regional threat has further complicated Trump’s efforts to find a way out of the conflict.
With the war now grinding into its seventh month, the United States is caught in a battle of attrition as Trump seeks to intensify economic pressure on Tehran.
Trump, who has offered shifting timelines for an end to the conflict, told reporters on Wednesday: “Hopefully we are towards the end.”
Analysts, however, warn that the conflict could continue well beyond 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.