Vice President JD Vance was the point person in negotiating the U.S.-Iran memorandum of understanding and has since become the face of that agreement. At his press conference on June 18, Vance tried to mask the realities of the U.S.-Iran MOU in ambiguities and contradictions. The vice president repeatedly said all the benefits given to Iran would be conditioned by its “performance,” never identifying what “performance” he sought to change. 

We have an abundance of examples of Iran’s misbehavior, but they are conspicuously absent in the MOU. Iran’s support for militia proxies is not mentioned, its sponsorship of hit squads of dissidents is not broached, and its storehouse of ballistic missiles is excused as a right of self-defense. Vance also boasted that “we have all the cards,” despite a guarantee that Iran would quickly reap tens of billions of dollars in frozen assets merely by signing the MOU.