By Mark Landler & David E. Sanger @ NYTimes.com, Sept. 23

[....] For Mr. Trump’s advisers, the biggest risk at the United Nations General Assembly this year is the reverse of what it was last year: not that he will be dangerously undiplomatic, but that he will be overly enthusiastic about engagement with wily adversaries.

Far from restraining Mr. Trump’s belligerent tendencies, his senior aides are engaged in a quiet effort to avoid a direct encounter with Iran’s leader that he would be unprepared to handle or concessions that they fear could undermine their effort to keep pressure on North Korea.

Either of those possibilities would rattle Mr. Trump’s aides, who are uniformly hawkish about Iran and North Korea, and favor squeezing those countries over talking to them [....]

“The president is prepared to bluster and threaten, but he also wants to achieve the deal of the century,” said Robert Malley, who helped negotiate the Iran nuclear deal as an official in the Obama administration. [....]

Laying out a series of requirements for the Iranians is one thing; controlling the president’s conviction that he can outmaneuver any leader, or strike any deal, is another. A vivid example of these challenges has come in the tangled preparations for Mr. Trump to be the chairman of a meeting of the Security Council on Wednesday [.....]