Middle East wars loom over UN General Assembly, and other Mideast developments

The Middle East is taking center stage at the United Nations General Assembly in New York as three years of wars across the region show no signs of letting up.

The conflict between the United States and Iran, fighting in Yemen and Israel’s wars with Hamas in Gaza and Hezbollah in Lebanon are high on speakers’ agendas.

U.S. President Donald Trump, who has struggled to find an endgame to the Iran war after more than six months, said representatives of the two countries met after he issued a brash threat in his U.N. speech.

Here is the latest news from the Middle East on Tuesday. Full coverage is available here.

Trump said U.S. and Iranian officials met shortly after he warned in his U.N. address that he may “annihilate” the Islamic Republic if a deal isn't reached soon to end the war.

Trump told reporters that the talks took place but gave no details beyond describing “a very good meeting.” Separately, U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio said Trump is open to meeting with Iran’s president, Masoud Pezeshkian, while he’s in New York for the General Assembly.

Iran’s joint military command responded to Trump’s threat in a statement, calling it “domestic propaganda” rather than reflecting realities on the ground. It said repeated U.S. threats showed “strategic desperation,” and warned that Iran is prepared to “inflict even more severe, crushing, and unpredictable blows” to the U.S. and Israel.

As an opening day of speeches got underway at the U.N., King Abdullah II of Jordan decried an “expansionist appetite” by Israel that he called “a regional threat.”

Abdullah equated the “destruction in Gaza and the de facto annexation of lands in the West Bank” to an “attempt to erase the Palestinian presence" and said Israel's goal was to make a Palestinian state “impossible.”

Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan called a decision to deny Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas a U.S. visa to attend the General Assembly an “injustice."

Erdogan urged all UN members to recognize Palestinian statehood. He called Gaza “the world’s largest graveyard for children” and the “most shameful concentration camp of our time.”

Pezeshkian struck a defiant note as he boarded a plane from Tehran to New York for the General Assembly, accusing the U.S. of doing “everything they can to block every possible route in order to force our nation and our people to surrender, because they were unable to do that through military means.”

Pezeshkian added that Iran is wary of another round of talks, having twice been attacked by the U.S. and Israel during active negotiations.

The regional Gulf Cooperation Council called for Iran and its allied groups to cease attacks on Arab Gulf states and allow free transit through two crucial maritime checkpoints.

Jasem Mohamed AlBudaiwi, the council’s head, said disruptions to traffic through the Strait of Hormuz and the Bab el-Mandeb Strait have rattled oil markets and supply chains worldwide, triggering “worldwide fallout.” Iran has said it attacked U.S. bases in the region as part of its response to U.S.-Israeli strikes.

AlBudaiwi made the comments in a meeting with Swiss officials on the sidelines of the U.N. General Assembly.

Trump is expected to meet representatives from the council on Tuesday in New York.

Maj. Gen. Yahya Rahim Safavi, a senior military adviser to Iran’s Supreme Leader, said Tuesday that the situation in the Bab el-Mandeb Strait would not return to its previous normal amid the conflict involving Yemen’s Houthi rebels and shipping in the Red Sea.

Safavi made the remarks in an interview with Iran’s state broadcaster, Islamic Republic of Iran Broadcasting.

“The Americans not only couldn’t achieve their objective regarding the Strait of Hormuz, but they now face a new problem called the Bab el-Mandeb Strait,” Safavi said.

He said reopening the Strait of Hormuz was contingent on the United States accepting Iran’s conditions, adding that it would not be reopened through U.S. military pressure.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who launched the Iran war along with the U.S. on Feb. 28, is also heading to New York for a brief trip, but is not expected to meet with Trump.

Netanyahu will be in New York for less than 24 hours, during which time Trump is scheduled to be in Washington for a meeting with Chinese leader Xi Jinping.

Netanyahu is up for reelection at the end of October. In the past, he has boasted of his close ties with Trump, but that relationship appears to be deteriorating as the war drags on. A meeting with Trump could have bolstered Netanyahu’s image ahead of the vote.

Netanyahu’s speech at the U.N. on Thursday is expected to garner protests, both inside and outside of the U.N.

As world leaders gathered at the U.N., some Palestinians in Gaza voiced frustration.

“The General Assembly, the United Nations, those have all our respect, but they should stop the bombing,” said Rami Al Bowboa, a displaced resident of Gaza City. “At least let us bring in lighters; let us have food, let us have water.”

Ahmed Lubad, displaced from northern Gaza, said he expected the assembly “to be serious about our issue, to set clear boundaries, and to pressure Israel.”

“We are exhausted, tired, and have lost everything,” Lubad said.

Another displaced resident, Imad Dawas, said UN meetings often produced “conditions, initiatives, and proposals, but not meaningful” action.

This report will be updated throughout the day as new developments emerge.

EDS NOTE: GRAPHIC CONTENT - This image taken from video released by Al-Masirah TV, a channel owned by Yemen's Houthi rebels, on Tuesday, Sept. 22, 2026, shows medical workers beside the body of a man after attempts to treat him at a hospital. According to the channel, the man and two of his young children were killed in a Saudi airstrike on their house in Mokha, Taiz province, Yemen. (Al-Masirah TV via AP)

This image taken from video released by Al-Masirah TV, a channel owned by Yemen's Houthi rebels, on Tuesday, Sept. 22, 2026, shows a man at a hospital holding a child who, according to the channel, was wounded in a Saudi airstrike on a house in Mokha, Taiz province, Yemen. (Al-Masirah TV via AP)

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu speaks at his Likud party New Year event in Tel Aviv, Israel, Thursday, Sept. 17, 2026. (AP Photo/Ariel Schalit)

The flag of the United Nations flies during the United Nations General Assembly (UNGA) at the UN headquarters, Monday, Sept. 21, 2026. (Justin Tang/The Canadian Press via AP)

A displaced Yemeni cooks at Al-Firdaws camp in Ras Imran, on the western outskirts of Aden, Yemen, Monday, Sept. 21, 2026. (AP Photo/Abdulnasser Alseddik)

People pose as they arrive for the United Nations General Assembly (UNGA) at the UN headquarters, Monday, Sept. 21, 2026. (Justin Tang/The Canadian Press via AP)

ABU DHABI, United Arab Emirates (AP) — Three-way talks between Russia, Ukraine and the United States opened Tuesday in Abu Dhabi, the head of Kyiv’s delegation said.

“We have moved to a trilateral negotiation format involving Ukraine, the United States and Russia” after initial Ukrainian discussions with NATO and European envoys, Rustem Umerov, the head of Ukraine’s Foreign Intelligence Service, said on social media.

The U.S. is renewing a push to end the war between Moscow and Kyiv after three rounds of negotiations earlier this year. The conflict, Europe's biggest since World War II, began after Russia's all-out invasion on Feb. 24, 2022.

The two-day session in Abu Dhabi, the first such meeting since February, will focus on security guarantees.

U.S. President Donald Trump’s son-in-law, Jared Kushner, said on X that he and fellow envoy Steve Witkoff were working on a “negotiated solution that can deliver lasting peace and create the conditions for a sovereign, secure, and prosperous Ukraine within a more stable European security environment.”

Umerov said that the day began with a meeting between the Ukrainian team, the U.S. envoys and representatives from the United Kingdom, France, Germany, Italy, NATO and the European Commission.

“Next, we will move to a trilateral format involving Ukraine, the United States and Russia,” Umerov said in a social media post.

Russian state news agency RIA Novosti reported Tuesday that the Russian delegation had arrived at the site of the talks.

The Russian and Ukrainian governments remain far apart on key elements of any prospective deal to end the full-scale war, now nearing its five-year mark.

Russian President Vladimir Putin wants Ukraine to pull its troops back from Donetsk, Luhansk, Zaporizhzhia and Kherson — the four regions that Moscow illegally annexed in September 2022 but never fully captured. He also demands that Ukraine abandon its bid to join NATO, accept strict limits on its military and drop restrictions on the Russian language and the Moscow-affiliated Orthodox Church in Ukraine.

Putin wants a comprehensive peace deal on those conditions and won’t agree to a general halt in hostilities, arguing that it would only allow Ukrainian troops to rest and replenish their weapons stockpiles. He has warned that Russia will achieve its goals by force if Kyiv refuses to meet its conditions for peace.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, who was visiting Denmark on Tuesday, rejects Putin’s demands to voluntarily cede territory that Russia hasn't been able to take on the battlefield. Zelenskyy also rejects any limits on Ukraine's military or its arrangements with Western partners, which Kyiv sees as essential security guarantees to stop Moscow from invading again.

Ukraine argues that an immediate ceasefire is the necessary first step toward negotiating a wider settlement and says a direct meeting between Putin and Zelenskyy is the only way territorial issues can be settled.

The Russian and Ukrainian delegations include senior officials who have attended previous rounds of talks.

Russia’s chief negotiator is Putin aide Vladimir Medinsky, who has led Moscow’s team since the first direct peace talks with Ukraine in Istanbul in March 2022. The Russian delegation also includes deputy foreign ministers Sergei Ryabkov and Mikhail Galuzin, military intelligence chief Igor Kostyukov and deputy chief of the General Staff’s operational department, Yuri Zhigarlovsky.

Apart from Umerov, the Ukrainian delegation also reportedly includes Zelenskyy’s chief of staff, Kyrylo Budanov, his deputy, Sergiy Kyslytsya, and Davyd Arakhamia, the parliamentary faction leader of Zelenskyy’s Servant of the People party.

Last week, Trump declared that some kind of grand deal about European security was in the works, describing it as “a big agreement” that is “going to involve more than Ukraine.”

Kushner said Monday on X that a “comprehensive and lasting settlement will also require direct engagement between Russia and our European partners on the broader security arrangements that affect them.” The discussions in Abu Dhabi will set the stage for “that engagement to begin in the near future, as part of a broader multilateral process,” he said.

Moscow has praised the broad approach.

“We can only welcome the (U.S.) negotiators on President Donald Trump’s request proposing to put the issue of collective security on top of the agenda of the talks on a Ukrainian settlement,” Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov said.

Just before Moscow launched the all-out invasion in 2022, it demanded that NATO roll back its deployments in the alliance’s member countries in Central and Eastern Europe, seeing their presence as a security threat. Similar demands will likely be part of any comprehensive peace deal proposed by Russia.

Kushner said that before the start of the three-way talks, he and Witkoff will meet separately with envoys from Ukraine, the European Union, NATO, Germany, France, the United Kingdom and Italy to “continue the close consultation and coordination we have undertaken on European security and Ukraine’s postwar future over the past several weeks.”

Some in the EU see Washington's proposals as too accommodating to Moscow.

Russia has objected to the Europeans’ involvement in the three-way talks, but said that EU representatives could join at a later stage.

While the ground battles have morphed into a war of attrition along the 1,200-kilometer (about 750-mile) front line, Russia and Ukraine have ramped up their long-range strikes with drones and missiles.

Russia has intensified its air campaign against Ukraine’s power grid, seeking to weaken the country’s resolve as winter sets in. Moscow has relied on ballistic missiles and jet-powered drones, taking advantage of Ukraine’s shortage of U.S.-made Patriot interceptors.

Ukraine, meanwhile, has escalated its drone strikes on Russian oil refineries.

German Chancellor Friedrich Merz, right, and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy attend a press conference in Berlin, Germany, Tuesday, Nov. 3, 2026. (AP Photo/Ebrahim Noroozi)

Russian President Vladimir Putin, center, chairs the Security Council meeting in Moscow, Friday, Nov. 6, 2026. (Alexei Babushkin, Sputnik, Kremlin Pool Photo via AP)

First lady Melania Trump speaks as Russia's Commissioner for Human Rights Yana Lantratova, from left, Ukraine's human rights ombudsman Dmytro Lubinets, Davyd Arakhamia, lawmaker with President Zelenskyy's Servant of the People's party, and Russian Presidential Envoy Kirill Dmitriev listen during a meeting with Russian and Ukrainian representatives in the Grand Foyer of the White House, Thursday, Nov. 5, 2026, in Washington. (AP Photo/Alex Brandon)

Family members cry beside the coffins of police officers Dmytro Besedin, Mykhailo Buzhenko, Mykola Balanda and Mykhailo Romanov, killed in a Russian airstrike that destroyed an underground school, and Serhii Berezhko and Oleg Dubetskyi, killed in an FPV drone attack in Komyshuvakha, during a farewell ceremony on Khortytsia Island in Zaporizhzhia, Ukraine, Saturday, Nov. 7, 2026. (AP Photo/Evgeniy Maloletka)

Crosses bearing the names of Viktor Fomenko, Natalia Karapetian and Andrii Anikin, killed in a Russian airstrike that destroyed an underground school in Komyshuvakha, lie in a cemetery in Zaporizhzhia, Ukraine, Saturday, Nov. 7, 2026. (AP Photo/Evgeniy Maloletka)