UN General Assembly Opens Tuesday: Trump to Press Zelenskyy on Diesel Strikes as U.S. Pump Prices Hit Record $6.50

Since the U.S. and Israel launched joint strikes on Iran in February and Tehran responded by shutting the Strait of Hormuz, the war has dragged toward its eighth month and diesel prices have more than doubled. The collision of war and economics arrives in Manhattan this week as the 81st UN General Assembly opens its general debate Tuesday, September 22, and runs through Monday, September 28, according to Gulf News.

Roughly 130 heads of state are expected, per PBS. Trump speaks Tuesday, right after Secretary-General Antonio Guterres's opening address, alongside French President Emmanuel Macron and, per ABC News, UK Prime Minister Keir Starmer. Iran's President Masoud Pezeshkian and Ukraine's Volodymyr Zelenskyy speak Wednesday. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu addresses the assembly Thursday, the same day Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas will speak only by video, after the U.S. denied him a visa for a second straight year, according to PBS.

Diesel, diesel, diesel

U.S. average diesel prices hit a record $6.50 a gallon Monday, up from $3.19 a year ago before the Iran war began, according to the Guardian. Ukraine has stepped up strikes on Russian refineries, including a weekend attack on a major Moscow-region refinery that killed three people. Trump wants it to stop.

"Russia has unfortunately lost control of its Diesel Oil Industry due to its War with Ukraine," Trump wrote on Truth Social Monday, adding that "25,000 people, mostly soldiers, are being killed each month" and calling the war "ridiculous." A senior Ukrainian official told the Financial Times, as reported by the Guardian, that Trump's Sunday call with Zelenskyy was about "diesel, diesel, diesel."

Zelenskyy pushed back Monday, saying Ukraine's own energy sector and food exports "must stop being targets for Russia," and that matching de-escalation from Moscow would bring reciprocal steps from Kyiv. The two leaders meet Tuesday on the sidelines of the assembly. The rising pump price is being read in Washington as a political liability for Republicans heading into November's midterms, per the Guardian.

Iran's delegation, on a short leash

Washington approved visas for Pezeshkian and Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi to attend, as required under the 1947 host-country agreement, but the State Department has restricted the delegation's movement and barred luxury purchases while in New York, according to Fox News and the Epoch Times.

"While ordinary Iranians endure brutal repression, water and electricity shortages, and soaring inflation, the regime's officials want to go on shopping sprees in New York. Not on our watch," State Department spokesman Tommy Pigott wrote on X. A White House official told the Epoch Times there are no plans for Trump to meet the Iranian delegation. U.S. Ambassador to the UN Mike Waltz said Trump's speech will stress that Iran must never obtain a nuclear weapon, a demand Waltz said is shared by the Security Council.

That is a defensible security posture toward a wartime adversary's delegation, and the host-country obligation to admit them at all is itself a diplomatic courtesy the U.S. did not have to extend generously. But it also means two nations at war will have their presidents in the same eight-square-mile island within 24 hours of each other, with Iran's Supreme National Security Council Secretary Mohsen Rezaei setting seven conditions for any talks, per Fox News, and Iran warning it has information a major new attack is being prepared, per Reuters.

A war crimes finding, unresolved

A UN report found "reasonable grounds" to believe the U.S. committed the war crime of an indiscriminate attack in two strikes in Iran, on a girls' school and a sports center, that resulted in civilian casualties, according to ABC News. That standard is an investigative threshold, not a conviction, and no U.S. official, court, or international body has filed charges over the strikes. The finding will almost certainly come up on the sidelines this week even though it is not on Tuesday's formal agenda.

Gulf leaders and a Venezuelan reception

Trump meets Gulf Cooperation Council leaders Tuesday, expected to include Saudi Arabia, the UAE, Qatar, Kuwait, Bahrain and Oman, with talk centered on a postwar endgame with Iran and freedom of navigation through the Strait of Hormuz and Bab al-Mandeb, Waltz told reporters, per ABC News. Separately, Trump will pull aside Venezuela's acting president Delcy Rodríguez at a leaders' reception, per the Epoch Times, the first Trump meeting with Rodríguez since U.S. forces captured Nicolás Maduro in Caracas in January. Maduro now sits in Brooklyn's Metropolitan Detention Center, about 10 miles from UN headquarters, facing federal drug trafficking charges.

Guterres's second term ends December 31 with no clear successor, and PBS reports four candidates are already making their case to member states this week. Whether any of that produces a workable ceasefire in Iran, Ukraine, or Gaza before world leaders go home Monday, September 28, remains an open question.