U.S. Vice President JD Vance had sharp words on Thursday for Israeli critics of the Trump administration’s peace deal with Iran, accusing them of being ungrateful to the United States.
Speaking to reporters during a White House press briefing, Vance said that he was skeptical of reports that Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu was “fuming” over the agreement before sharply criticizing members of the Israeli cabinet who have made negative public remarks.
“That’s not reflective of the conversations that I’ve had with him, but maybe he’s saying something to somebody else that he’s not saying to me,” Vance said of Netanyahu. “What I will say, and this does bother me, is that you’ve seen people within Bibi’s cabinet who have come out and attacked the deal, and in some ways, very personally attacked the president of the United States.”
“My message to them would be twofold: One, Donald J. Trump is the only head of state in the entire world who is sympathetic to the nation of Israel at this moment in time, and he happens to be the head of state of the world’s superpower,” Vance said. “If I was in the cabinet of the Israeli government, I might not be attacking the only powerful ally that I have anywhere left in the entire world.”
Israeli Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich and National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir are among the Israeli officials who have publicly come out against the U.S.-Iran Memorandum of Understanding, with Ben-Gvir writing that Israel would not be bound by the deal.
Ben-Gvir posted an image of Vance on social media on Thursday, saying the United States ought to have dealt with “the Nazis of the 21st century,” referring to Iran, “just as the United States dealt with the Nazis of the 20th century.”
Vance credited Netanyahu with avoiding personal attacks on Trump, but reminded the Israeli cabinet that “two-thirds of the defensive weapons that have protected your homeland have been built by American hands and paid for by American tax dollars.”
He stated that “the problem for Israel is not Donald J. Trump, and anybody in Israel who thinks their biggest problem is the president of the United States needs to wake up and smell the reality of the situation that country is in.”
The vice president spent most of Thursday’s press conference describing and defending the MoU, which a senior U.S. official read aloud in a background press briefing, but which has not yet been officially published.
Trump signed the MoU at the Palace of Versailles on Wednesday after the conclusion of a G7 summit, and Iranian state media released images of Iranian President Masoud Pezekhian holding up his signature on the deal on Thursday.
Vance said the 60-day clock to reach the “final deal” described in the MoU began on Thursday, ahead of an expected signing ceremony and talks between the United States and Iran this weekend in Geneva.
