The 81st session of the UN General Assembly resembled a diplomatic bodybuilding contest, with each delegation displaying its strength from the podium. Atlas News Romania looks beyond the official statements: US-Iran contacts denied in the morning and confirmed by evening, the secret straw polls in the race to succeed António Guterres, the modest record of Donald Trump’s Board of Peace, the presence of leading artificial intelligence executives before the Security Council and Xi Jinping’s state visit to Washington in the midst of UN week. An analysis of an institution that is diminished but not dead, and of the shift of real decision-making from the plenary hall to the corridors of power.