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Vice President JD Vance argued during an interview with Bill Maher Friday that “America wins” even if Iran refuses to sign a deal that would end the war.
“If we don’t make the final deal, their nuclear program is still destroyed, they’re still much weaker as a country,” Vance said during his appearance on “Real Time with Bill Maher.”
“So my attitude is America wins either way,” he added.
Vance noted that President Trump tasked US negotiators with “something that frankly, nobody in 47 years of dealing with the Iranians has done, which is offer them an opportunity to fundamentally transform how they behave with the West.”
“If they’re willing to change, we’re willing to change, too,” the vice president said, adding, “If they’re not willing to change, we still fundamentally have all the cards.
“I think it’s a good place for us to be.”
The 41-year-old veep jetted off to Switzerland last weekend for high-stakes meetings with Iranian representatives mediated by Pakistani and Qatari officials.
During his face-to-face remarks with Tehran’s top negotiators last Sunday, Vance declared the Trump administration’s goal was to “transform our relationship” with Iran.
“What the president has asked us to do is turn over a new leaf to transform our relationship with the people of Iran, and to extend an outstretched hand that says to the people of Iran that if your leadership is willing to give up being a driver of regional instability,” Vance said.
“If they are willing to give up nuclear weapons ambitions for the long term, then the United States is willing to fundamentally transform our relationship with that country,” he went on. “That is certainly our goal.”
Vance’s trip to the luxurious Buergenstock Resort Lake Lucerne, near Stansstad, Switzerland, was a part of the first round of talks with Iran under the mutually agreed memorandum of understanding.
The MOU between President Trump and Iran’s President Masoud Pezeshkian was meant to stop fighting and kick off 60 days of talks for a grand deal to end Tehran’s nuclear program.
On Friday, hours before Vance’s sit-down with Maher, Trump claimed Iran had violated the cease-fire after an Iranian drone struck Singaporean-flagged ship M/V Ever Lovely.
The attack came after Iran warned vessels to ignore a US-approved shipping lane through the Strait of Hormuz, along the Omani coast, instead hoping for the ships to use a passage of their choosing.
Following the “foolish violation,” US forces conducted military strikes in Iran, targeting Iranian drone storage facilities and coastal radar sites.
On Saturday, Iran claimed it had struck targets linked to the US in response to Friday’s strikes but didn’t identify the targets, according to Reuters.
Vance warned Iran that violent acts during the cease-fire will be met with force
“Iran signed a cease-fire agreement. We have honored it. If they have disagreements about how the MOU is being applied, they can pick up the phone,” he wrote on X. “But violence will be met with violence.”
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