President Biden will address the United Nations General Assembly on Tuesday morning, as leaders and representatives from 134 countries gather in New York City for the convention. Notably, the heads of some top authoritarian nations embroiled in international conflicts will not be in attendance.

While Russian President Vladimir Putin, Chinese President Xi Jinping, and North Korean leader Kim Jong Un will not be present, Iranian President Masoud Pezeshkian will give a speech on Tuesday despite international pushback stemming from Tehran’s support for terrorism, interference in the 2022 U.S. election, and assassination threats against American politicians, including former President Trump.

According to reports on Monday, Pezeshkian told reporters in New York, “We don’t want war … we want to live in peace.”

However, his comments are not expected to be taken at face value. Biden, who will speak before the Iranian president, will “rally global action to tackle the world’s most pressing challenges,” White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre said Monday.

Biden is expected to outline his administration’s priorities and vision for the international body in what will be his final address to the U.N. as president.

According to U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations Linda Thomas-Greenfield, Washington has three main areas of focus it will emphasize during the week’s events, including continued efforts to “end the scourge of war” as approximately a quarter of the world’s population lives in “conflict-affected areas” amidst escalating wars.

The U.S. also plans to encourage other member nations to increase their support for humanitarian aid workers while working to create a more “inclusive and effective international system” by adding two new permanent seats to the U.N. Security Council (UNSC) for African nations as well as another rotating seat reserved for Small Island Developing States.

But as the Biden administration seeks to shake things up within the international body, one U.N. expert expressed concern that the U.N. is skirting the threats of today by holding a meeting focused on ambiguous concerns of tomorrow.

“I wish [there was] a ‘Summit of the Present’ and not a ‘Summit of the Future,’ because the future gives us a chance to be gauzy,” Hugh Dugan, who served as a U.S. delegate to the United Nations and as senior adviser to 11 U.S. ambassadors to the U.N. between 1989 and 2015, told Digital in reference to the “Summit of the Future” event that was held over the weekend.

“A lot of hyperbole is going to be heard this week,” he added. “If it were the ‘Summit of the Present,’ that would imply accountability now, whether we’re effective now and whether the U.N. is efficient.”

Despite Thomas-Greenfield’s calls for “hope” during her Friday remarks, a noticeable sense of gloom pervaded the summit as massive international conflicts persist with no obvious end in sight, including Russia’s war in Ukraine, the gang takeover of Haiti, and civil wars in Sudan and Myanmar.

U.N. Secretary-General Antonio Guterres told reporters last week that the Summit of the Future was a challenge issued to nations last year to come prepared and “was born out of a cold hard fact: International challenges are moving faster than our ability to solve them.”

Guterres highlighted “out-of-control geopolitical divisions” and “runaway” conflicts, climate change, and an unclear path forward in how to cope with artificial intelligence, which is an enormous issue that has sparked debate over how to develop and utilize it across multiple sectors, including military integration.

“Global institutions and frameworks are today totally inadequate to deal with these complex and even existential challenges,” he said. “And it’s no great surprise. Those institutions were born in a bygone era for a bygone world.

“We can’t create a future fit for our grandchildren with systems built for our grandparents,” he warned in a tone that is expected to carry throughout the summit.

But Dugan again pointed to the issue of accountability, questioning whether it is easier for the top U.N. official to push for major changes in the U.N. rather than evaluate any ongoing mismanagement of spending, bureaucracy, and internal politics within the U.N.

Although 134 nations will attend this year’s event, the heads of two of the five permanent UNSC seats will be absent as China’s Xi and Russia’s Putin have sent delegations in their place, a move that has become increasingly common in recent years.

Dugan, who served on the National Security Council during the Trump administration where he dealt with international organizations, said this practice allows the authoritarian leaders to avoid having to answer tough questions largely derived from Western nations and their regional allies, but it also suggests they are “not concerned about showing disrespect.”

When asked about the U.N. and its legitimacy, particularly the U.N. Security Council, which has become sharply divided between the U.S., Britain, and France versus Russia and China after Putin’s invasion of Ukraine, Dugan said he believes the U.N. Security Council continues to hold significant standing in the global community.

“I’m always of the view that it does have legitimacy,” he said. “It’s easy for us to say, well, it can’t get a consensus, or it doesn’t come to a resolution and, therefore, say it’s not legitimate. I don’t believe that is the case.

“Its true test of its ability is its ability to continue to convene people around the table,” Dugan continued. “Even if the head of state isn’t at that table, the delegations know it’s too dangerous not to be at that table.”