Trump's past threat to North Korea misleadingly linked to Middle East tensions

“After the North Korea threat against the US joining Iran/Israel war, Trump made this speech in the United Nation Assembly (sic),” read the caption of a Threads post published on June 21, 2025. 

Image

Screenshot showing the misleading post, taken June 27, 2025

In the minute-long video, Trump says: “The United States has great strength and patience. But if it’s forced to defend itself or its allies, we would have no choice but to totally destroy North Korea …” 

The video, shared more than a hundred times, was published by an account called “Yakubu Muhammad Sunusi”, which includes many posts critical of Trump and Israel.

On June 13, 2025, Iran launched a massive retaliatory strike, firing more than 100 ballistic missiles and drones into Israel, declaring its actions a response to Israel’s “preemptive” Operation Rising Lion targeting Iranian nuclear and military infrastructure (archived here).

A US-brokered ceasefire took hold after 12 days of intense exchanges, with Iran agreeing to pause if Israel did likewise. However, Tehran has voiced “serious doubts” over Israel’s commitment and reserved the right to resume strikes if the truce is violated (archived here and here).

While North Korea condemned Israel’s launching of strikes to spark its conflict with Iran, the video does not show Trump threatening to destroy the country if it chooses to enter the conflict (archived here).

Old video

Using Google Lens to conduct reverse image searches on keyframes from the video, AFP found the original version of the clip published on its own YouTube account on September 19, 2017 (archived here).

In the 51-second video, Trump -- who was making his inaugural speech at the UN General Assembly -- addressed North Korea’s nuclear weapons programme and warned that the US would defend itself if Pyongyang launched missiles into its territory.

“No one has shown more contempt for other nations and for the well-being of their own people than the depraved regime in North Korea,” Trump said. 

At the video's 18-second mark, Trump continued by saying that “the United States has great strength and patience. But if it’s forced to defend itself or its allies, we would have no choice but to totally destroy North Korea”.

This was the section of the video used in the false claim. 

Trump, in his first term, repeatedly warned North Korea over its weapons tests, deeming it a violation of the UN Security Council resolutions.

A month before Trump's warning at the UN summit, the BBC reported how Pyongyang held off its plans to fire missiles near the US Pacific territory of Guam (archived here).