US Vice President JD Vance said Tuesday that the emerging peace deal between Washington and Tehran was a “home run for the American people,” whether or not Israel liked it.
The comments came as US President Donald Trump predicted a deal was two or three days away, and denied Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu had defied him by responding to Iran’s renewed missile attacks on Israel on Sunday night.
In an interview with Fox News, Vance acknowledged that the US and Israel “have a lot of shared interests, but we also have some situations where our interests diverge.”
“I think where the president has been very clear here is that while Israel obviously has some objectives that it has, the United States’ main objective in Iran is to ensure that Iran does not have a nuclear weapon,” Vance said.
He claimed that since Trump returned to power, the White House has “created the space” for a nuclear deal that would be superior to the one reached in 2015 by then-US president Barack Obama.
“Over the last year and a half, we’ve created the space necessary where the president believes – and I think that he’s right – that we can get the long-term settlement to Iran’s nuclear deal,” he said.
“Now, Israel may like that, they may not like that,” Vance added. “But fundamentally, we think this is in the best interest of the United States of America.”
Asked if the Iranians are “trying to play” the US negotiators, Vance responded: “Everybody’s always trying to play everybody.”
According to Vance, Trump’s emerging deal was better than Obama’s because the earlier deal — which Trump bolted in 2018 after fierce lobbying by Netanyahu — lacked a “proper inspections regime to ensure the Iranians could never build a nuclear weapon.”
“That is one of the big differences between what happened then and what the president of the United States would get to, assuming we are ultimately able to make a deal,” he said.
“We’re going to take the attitude of: ‘Accomplish the president’s mission, but verify over the long term that the Iranians are keeping their end of the bargain,'” he added. “It’s a tall order, but it’s one that the president has put us in a good position to achieve.”
According to Vance, the Iranians “don’t want this war to continue, it’s not in their best interest, and I think they are coming to the table and putting some things on the table.
“We are of course going to verify it, but if we get this deal it’s going to be a home run win for the American people,” he said.
Trump: We’re in ‘final throes’ of deal
Vance’s comments came after Israel and Iran exchanged fire for the first time in two months on Sunday night and Monday, tossing a wrench in negotiations for a peace deal. Both sides have since announced they would hold their fire.
Iran started the round with a missile barrage on northern Israel Sunday night, after Israel targeted Iran’s Lebanese proxy Hezbollah in Beirut despite agreeing last week not to strike the Lebanese capital.
Trump had publicly called on Israel not to respond to the Iranian attack, and Netanyahu on Monday reportedly called off a major strike in Iran after the US president warned him Israel would be alone in the battle.
Asked, in a reported conversation with the BBC, whether Netanyahu defied him by attacking Iran, Trump said: “No, no. That’s not what happened.”
Iran’s missiles “had already gone,” and Israeli forces “were already on their way,” by the time Trump spoke with Netanyahu late on Sunday, Trump was quoted as saying.
“If I tell him to do something, he does it,” Trump said, according to the BBC. “All I said was we have to use common sense, we’re close to signing a very powerful deal, a very good deal.”
Trump also told reporters upon return from Monday night’s NBA Finals game in New York that “we’re in the final throes of what will be a very, very good deal.” The deal would take “two or three days,” he predicted.
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