At the United Nations General Assembly, Donald Trump invoked the language of annihilation against Iran, staking American credibility on the sharpest possible terms of confrontation. Yet even as those words settled over the assembly hall, diplomats from both nations were meeting quietly in the corridors — a reminder that in statecraft, what is said loudly and what is done carefully are rarely the same thing. This tension between rhetorical maximalism and continued engagement has become the signature of US-Iran relations under Trump, leaving the world to wonder whether the threats are a negotiat