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Vice President J.D. Vance delivered a press briefing on Tuesday, standing in for White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt, who is out on maternity leave.
He provided a clean bottom line on the issue with Iran, acknowledging the regime’s internal leadership confusion amid negotiations and a recently canceled attack against the country.
“It’s a very complicated country,” Vance said. He noted that the Iranian people were very smart and very proud, “and you see some of that in the negotiating team on the other side – you also see some very hardline positions in the negotiating team on the other side, and so I think you see that conflict, the fact that maybe the Iranians aren’t themselves quite clear in what directions they want to go.”
On Monday, President Trump announced that he had called off a scheduled attack on Iran, citing requests from the leaders of Qatar, Saudi Arabia, and the United Arab Emirates, and presumed developments in “serious negotiations.”
If negotiations fail, the president said that the U.S. was prepared to resume military operations against Iran.
During his briefing to the press on Tuesday, Vance reiterated the president’s position, noting that the Trump administration wanted to ensure that Iran could not obtain a nuclear weapon.
“We want to see not just the commitment to not have a nuclear weapon, but the commitment to work with us on a process to ensure that not just now – not just when Donald Trump is president – but years down the road, that the Iranians are not rebuilding that nuclear capability, and that’s what we’re trying to accomplish in the negotiations,” the vice president stated.
Vance further acknowledged, like President Trump, that should negotiations fail, “there’s an option B,” which includes using the U.S. military to “prosecute the case.”
He added, “We have an opportunity here, I think, to reset the relationship that has existed between Iran and the United States for 47 years. That’s what the president has asked us to do, and that’s what we’re going to keep on working at. But it takes two to tango. We are not going to have a deal that allows the Iranians to have a nuclear weapon. So, as the president just told me, we’re locked and loaded. We don’t want to go down that pathway, but the president is willing and able to go down that pathway if we have to.”