President Donald Trump told the United Nations General Assembly on Tuesday that Iran made a “big mistake” by refusing to abandon its nuclear program, and that he now faces a “big decision” on the ongoing confrontation with the Islamic Republic.

In a forceful address, the president laid out two stark paths for Tehran. “Will a deal be made with Iran that lets them rebuild and create a far greater country than it ever was before? Maybe one of the greatest in the Middle East or even the world,” he asked, “or do I annihilate the Islamic Republic and do it quickly, never giving them a chance to kill and destroy people and countries again?”

“Do I drive them into hell with no chance of survival and no hope of future greatness or generations? But I believe we’ll make a deal right after the election, because it doesn’t make sense for them not to.” — President Donald Trump, UN General Assembly

Trump said Iranian leaders appear to be stalling in hopes of influencing the outcome of November’s midterm elections — a calculation he dismissed outright. “They’re waiting to see how I do in the midterm election. What they don’t realize is that I’m not running. I did that already and won in a landslide,” he said. “We won in a giant landslide, and I’ll be here for two and a half years. The Republican Party is running and I’ll be helping them, but I am not running.”

He stressed that electoral politics play no role in his approach to Tehran. “I gave absolutely no credence and will not give credence to the election when it comes to Iran. It doesn’t even enter my mind. The only thing that does is that Iran will never have a nuclear weapon.”

Trump recalled that upon returning to office he had immediately opened negotiations, offering Iran full economic cooperation in exchange for ending its nuclear program and its support for terrorism. Tehran refused — a decision the president described as a major error that led to military action. Talks between U.S. officials and Iranian representatives continued on the sidelines of the General Assembly; Trump later called those discussions productive, while maintaining that any final agreement would come only after the midterms.

Could Iran follow Japan’s postwar path?

During the Second World War, Imperial Japan fielded a powerful military and, by wide historical consensus, treated its opponents with extreme cruelty. That record was overshadowed in the world’s memory, Adil writes, after the United States dropped atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki — bombings he calls “an extremely reprehensible and inhumane act,” one still condemned by American citizens and scholars today.

Yet Japan, he notes, chose a different future. Emperor Hirohito’s government renounced revenge and set the country on a path of reconstruction under American oversight. From 1945 to 1952, the United States — under General Douglas MacArthur — led sweeping political, economic and social reforms that reshaped Japan into a stable democracy.

The United States helped draft Japan’s constitution, which remains in force today — establishing parliamentary democracy, guaranteeing civil liberties, granting women the vote, and renouncing war. Washington also backed land reform to empower farmers, broke up wartime industrial monopolies, funneled aid to stave off famine, recognized labor unions, and modernized education and public health.

Adil poses the underlying question directly: why did the United States help Japan? To ensure it would never again become a military power, he writes, to build a democratic ally against Soviet influence in the Cold War, and to stabilize East Asia. Japan’s postwar leadership, in turn, chose development over a “politics of revenge” — and the U.S.–Japan alliance endures eight decades later. Japan’s younger generations, Adil notes, are raised on a curriculum built around cooperation rather than resentment toward their former adversary.

Whether Tehran’s leadership draws the same lesson remains, in the president’s own framing, the open question hanging over the next two and a half years.