A deal preventing Iran from obtaining a nuclear weapon would be a “home-run win for the American people,” U.S. Vice President JD Vance said on Monday.
“Over the last year and a half, we’ve created the space necessary where the president believes—and I think that he’s right—that we can get the long-term settlement to Iran’s nuclear deal,” Vance told Fox News‘ “Jesse Watters Primetime.”
Vance spoke after the Islamic Republic and its regional terrorist proxies fired multiple missile barrages at Israel from Sunday night into Monday, breaking a fragile ceasefire that had been in place since April 8.
Asked about U.S. President Donald Trump’s discussions with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, Vance told Watters that Washington and Jerusalem “have a lot of shared interests, but we also have some situations where our interests diverge.”
“I think where the president has been very clear here is that while Israel obviously has some objectives that it has, the United States’ main objective in Iran is to ensure that Iran does not have a nuclear weapon,” the vice president added.
“Israel may like that; they may not like that,” he said, in reference to ongoing diplomatic talks mediated by Pakistan. “But fundamentally, we think this is in the best interest of the United States of America.”
Vance told Fox News that the negotiations were showing signs of progress, saying Tehran was putting “real things” on the table.
“The Iranians don’t want this war to continue,” the vice president claimed. “It’s not in their best interest.”
Asked by Watters if the Iranian negotiators were “trying to play” their U.S. counterparts, Vance responded, “Everybody’s always trying to play everybody.”
The White House has been “very involved in these negotiations,” he noted. “We’re going to take the attitude of: Accomplish the president’s mission, but verify over the long term that the Iranians are keeping their end of the bargain.’ It’s a tall order, but it’s one that the president has put us in a good position to achieve.”
The “number one thing” that wrong with the 2015 Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA) negotiated by President Barack Obama, which Trump pulled out from in 2015, was the lack of a “proper inspections regime to ensure that the Iranians could never build a nuclear weapon,” Vance said.
“That is one of the big differences between what happened then and what the president of the United States would get to, assuming we are ultimately able to make a deal,” he added.
Jerusalem and Washington launched joint military operations against the Iranian regime on Feb. 28, which were halted following the April 8 truce.
Trump on Monday called on Israel and Iran to “immediately stop shooting,” claiming that both sides were “looking to do an immediate ceasefire” and put an end to the flare-up.
“Final negotiations on ‘peace’ are proceeding, subject to ignorance or stupidity getting in its way,” the president claimed in a Truth Social post. “Things should move quickly.”
In a televised address on Monday evening, Netanyahu said the Israel Defense Forces had refrained from further strikes after Iran held fire, but warned that the Jewish state would respond with “overwhelming force” if the regime resumed its assaults.
Meanwhile, Tehran threatened to carry out “far more severe and crushing” missile attacks against Israel if the Jewish state continued military operations against Hezbollah, its Lebanese proxy.
