US warns Iran that ‘all options are on the table’ in emergency UN meeting

After weeks of escalating tension, US and Iranian officials faced each other Thursday at the UN Security Council, where America’s envoy renewed threats against the Islamic Republic despite President Donald Trump’s efforts to lower the temperature between the two adversaries.

The US was joined by Iranian dissidents in rebuking the government’s bloody crackdown on nationwide protests that activists say has killed at least 2,637 people.

“Colleagues, let me be clear: President Trump is a man of action, not endless talk like we see at the United Nations,” Mike Waltz, US ambassador to the UN, said in a statement. “He has made it clear that all options are on the table to stop the slaughter. And no one should know that better than the leadership of the Iranian regime.”

Waltz’s remarks came as the prospect of US retaliation for the protesters’ deaths still hung over the region, though Trump signaled a possible de-escalation, saying the killing appeared to be ending. By Thursday, the protests challenging Iran’s theocracy appeared increasingly smothered, but the state-ordered internet and communication blackout remained.

The US requested the emergency Security Council meeting and invited two Iranian dissidents, Masih Alinejad and Ahmad Batebi, to open the session with gruesome details of their experience as targets of the Islamic Republic.

In a stunning moment, Alinejad addressed the Iranian representative directly.

“You have tried to kill me three times. I have seen my would-be assassin with my own eyes in front of my garden, in my home in Brooklyn,” she said while the Iranian official looked directly ahead, without acknowledging her.

Before the meeting, Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi and UN Secretary General Antonio Guterres spoke by phone for the first time since the deadly protests began last month. Iran’s semiofficial Tasnim news agency reported that Araghchi implored the top UN official to live up to the “serious expectation” that Iran’s government and its people have of the UN’s role in condemning “illegal US interventions against Iran.”