Vice President JD Vance argued that Tehran’s actions during negotiations indicated that it was aiming to acquire a nuclear weapon, causing the U.S. strike on the country.
In an interview on Fox News, Vance was asked why the United States chose now to strike Iran and what its assessments were about the country’s nuclear program, alluding to confusion over the Trump administration’s competing claims that Iran was seeking a nuclear weapon but that the U.S. also annihilated the program in Operation Midnight Hammer last summer. Vance argued that the U.S. did destroy Iran’s nuclear enrichment facilities but wanted to go further due to its view that Tehran was going to keep rebuilding them to obtain a nuclear weapon as soon as possible.
“We did destroy the nuclear enrichment facilities during Operation Midnight Hammer over the summer. … We destroyed Iran’s ability to build a nuclear weapon during President Trump’s term. We set them back substantially,” Vance said. “But I think the president was looking for the long haul. He 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.”
He said President Donald Trump decided on the most recent strikes after nearly a year of “painstaking diplomacy.”
“He 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,” Vance said. “So he saw that the Iranian regime was weakened. He knew that they were committed to getting on the brink of a nuclear weapon, and he decided to take action because he felt that was necessary in order to protect the nation’s security.”
The key moment in the decision came during negotiations, over the “comical” behavior of the Iranians. While the U.S. had no issue with Tehran pursuing civil nuclear energy, Vance said their demands only made sense if they wanted to pursue a nuclear weapon.
“Why are you building your enrichment facilities 70 feet underground, and why are you enriching to a level that’s way beyond civilian enrichment and is only useful if your goal is to build a nuclear bomb? Nobody objects to the Iranians being able to build medical isotopes. The objection is these enrichment facilities that are only useful for building a nuclear weapon,” he said.
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“It just doesn’t pass the smell test for you to say that you want enrichment for like medical isotopes, while at the same time trying to build a facility 70–80 feet underground,” Vance concluded.
Vance has been known as a proponent of non-interventionism, but a recent report from the New York Times, citing sources familiar with discussions, claimed that he had a central role in pushing for strikes against Iran. While skeptical overall, he reportedly pushed Trump to go beyond the initial aim of limited strikes to instead “go big and go fast.”
