The United Nations ‘Sovereignty Week’

President Donald Trump is set to address the United Nations General Assembly on Tuesday, September 25. When asked what his opening remarks will involve, a source within the administration stated a one-word summary: “Sovereignty.” In addition to his opening remarks to the United Nations General Assembly, President Trump plans to highlight two main issues throughout the week: the global opioid crisis and the “malign activity” of Iran.

The president plans to address a counter-narcotics summit, which will mainly focus on opioids that have been arriving from China. He wants to label this particular topic as a “global issue.” However, many in the media have begun to believe that this angle is solely for show and will not produce any real results. As far as Iran, Trump is supposed to chair a UN Security Council briefing that will discuss “counter-proliferation.” President Trump wants to single out Iran when it comes to the proliferation of ballistic missiles during the Iran deal. Negotiated by the Obama Administration, the Iran deal was supposed to bring an era of nonproliferation regarding nuclear weapons.

However, that was unfortunately not the case. Iran broke from the deal in multiple places. They were found to have to have operated more advanced uranium-enrichment centrifuges than was permitted and announced that they had the capability to initiate a mass production of these centrifuges. Also, they exceeded the limits on production and storage of heavy water which would allow the operation of plutonium-producing heavy-water, nuclear reactors. Additionally, Iran covertly procured nuclear and missile technology outside of the allotted channels. German intelligence contributes to this finding.

Lastly, Iran refused to allow inspectors to access the nuclear research and military facilities. All of these violations are extremely serious when dealing with an extremely delicate deal such as this one. Many European countries were involved in the oversight and funding of this deal. Eventually, President Trump pulled out of the entire deal, and now he is looking to highlight the problems in Iran at this summit. When discussing the Iran deal, many Republican officials are not happy. According to a source from Axios, they’re “pissed the Europeans are refusing to do anything about it, so they’re going to continue laying out evidence in front of the public to shame them into acting…”