U.S. Vice President JD Vance on Wednesday defended the administration’s negotiations with Iran as being conducted “from a position of strength,” pushing back on critics who have called for continued military escalation.
Speaking at Naval Air Station Oceana in Virginia Beach, Va., Vance said the U.S. is leveraging recent military gains to pursue diplomacy, arguing that force should only be used with clearly defined objectives. “We must never drop bombs just for the sake of dropping bombs,” he said.
He pointed to recent U.S. airstrikes targeting Iran-linked threats to commercial shipping, saying the action restored maritime transit after attacks on vessels. “We dropped some bombs, we applied some leverage, and we’ve had free commercial transit,” he said.
Vance said broader U.S. military actions had significantly weakened Iran’s capabilities, asserting that its navy had been effectively destroyed and that it can no longer project power as it did a year ago. He added that U.S. intelligence assessments show Iran is further from developing a nuclear weapon than at any point in recent decades, and said its defense industrial base has also been degraded, limiting its ability to rebuild.
