U.S. Vice President JD Vance said on Monday that the objective of the current war against Iran is to ensure that the Islamic Republic would “never” build a nuclear weapon.
Asked by Fox News about the timing of “Operation Epic Fury,” Vance stressed that while “Operation Midnight Hammer” in June destroyed Iran’s nuclear facilities—setting Tehran’s project “substantially back”—U.S. President Donald Trump “was looking for the long haul.”
The president, he explained in the interview, “was looking for Iran to make a significant long-term commitment that they would never build a nuclear weapon, that they would not pursue the ability to be on the brink of a nuclear weapon and after months, really almost a year of painstaking diplomacy, what the president determined is he didn’t want to just keep the president, or excuse me, keep the country safe from an Iranian nuclear weapon for the first three, four years of his second term.”
Vance continued, saying Trump “wanted to make sure that Iran could never have a nuclear weapon and that would require fundamentally a change in mindset from the Iranian regime. So, he saw that the Iranian regime was weakened.”
He further maintained that the president “wants to make it clear to the Iranians and the world that he is not going to rest until he accomplishes that all-important objective of ensuring that Iran can’t have a nuclear weapon.”
President Trump will not get the United States into a years-long conflict with no clear objective.
— JD Vance (@JDVance) March 3, 2026
Iran can never be allowed to obtain a nuclear weapon. That is the goal of this operation and President Trump will see it through to completion. pic.twitter.com/Spi2Mcke6F
