Trump talked about annihilating Iran. The more revealing word was “midterms.”

WASHINGTON — I’m back from a week covering the United Nations General Assembly in New York, where leaders from around the world brought their domestic fights to the international stage and tried to explain why the rest of us should care.

President Trump offered the clearest example. His warning that he could “annihilate the Islamic Republic” made headlines, as you would expect. But the part of his speech I keep coming back to was his prediction that a deal with Iran could come after the November midterm elections.

Trump said Tehran was waiting to see how he performs at the polls — something I’ve been flagging for months.

That is a remarkable timeline to put before the world while the United States remains at war. Trump is arguing that Iran believes it can hold out until American politics changes its negotiating position.

My read is that he’s telling Tehran that its bet will fail: Wait for the election if you want, but do not expect him to abandon his strategy simply because the calendar turns to November.

Whether that produces a deal is another question. Trump’s prediction is still a prediction, and the distance between the two sides was on display when Iranian President Masoud Pezeshkian addressed the General Assembly.

He presented Iran as a country standing up to American pressure while maintaining that it remained open to talks. But being open to talks is the easy part. An agreement would require concessions from both sides, and neither leader’s public language made those concessions sound close.

If I were a mediator listening to talk of “annihilation” on one side and refusing to bend on the other, I would be nervous. Those words play well to audiences at home. They leave much less room for the people trying to get an agreement across the table.

That’s why Pakistani Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif’s appearance mattered. Pakistan helped bring the United States and Iran into talks in Islamabad, and its government has continued to press for diplomacy and implementation of the Islamabad Memorandum of Understanding.

The memorandum did not end the war. Still, getting two parties this far apart to agree to something on paper was an accomplishment, and it is worth remembering when judging what Pakistan’s mediation achieved. pid.gov.pk

I attended the Islamabad talks, and I have heard the criticism that they did not deliver enough. There are plenty of criticisms to make.

But the question is what would have happened without a channel for the two sides to talk at all. Pakistan helped create one, and I doubt its work as a mediator is finished.

Sharif also used the international stage to raise a threat much closer to home: militancy along Pakistan’s border with Afghanistan. Five years after the United States left Afghanistan, the Taliban governs in Kabul, while Pakistan faces attacks by the Pakistani Taliban, a separate armed group. Islamabad says militants have operated from Afghan territory.

That is an allegation that deserves scrutiny, but the broader point should not disappear from Western attention: Leaving Afghanistan did not make the region’s security problems go away.

Then there was Ukraine. President Volodymyr Zelensky called Vladimir Putin “Patient Zero,” describing him as the source from which the idea of war keeps spreading. It was an arresting metaphor, and he used it to argue that giving Putin more space to act would bring more instability beyond Ukraine.

Zelensky’s “Patient Zero” line landed in the same week Taylor Swift released a song with that exact title. Her new music video tells a different story, but there is a strong analogy.

In the video, Swift plays a woman who has already experienced a destructive relationship, while another woman becomes involved with the same man. She recognizes the pattern and tries to warn her.

I know, I know — a Taylor Swift video is a strange place to take a discussion about Putin. But it gets at what Zelensky was trying to tell the room. Ukraine knows what it is like to live with the consequences of Putin’s decisions.

When Zelensky calls him “Patient Zero,” he is telling other leaders: We have seen what this man does. Please believe us before you invite him any closer.

The timing sharpened his point in another way, as Trump last week invited Putin to the G20 summit in Miami this December.

Trump’s approach to diplomacy often starts with bringing an adversary into the room and seeing whether a relationship can move negotiations forward. Zelensky’s warning was that Putin could use that room, too.

That is the argument running through these speeches. Trump thinks Iran may come to a deal once its hoped-for political opening passes. Iran wants to show it cannot be forced into one.

Pakistan wants the world to recognize that even an incomplete agreement can matter. Zelensky wants leaders to consider what an invitation gives Putin before they offer it.

At the UN, each leader was speaking to the people in the hall, but also to audiences at home and to the adversaries watching from elsewhere.

The loudest line was rarely the whole message. Trump’s threat drew the headline. His midterm timeline told us more about how he thinks this war might end.