Vance warns US could resume war: ‘That’s kind of up to the Iranians’

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Vice President Vance on Wednesday appeared open to the idea that the United States could resume its war against Iran should the ongoing 60-day ceasefire end without a peace agreement in place.

“The president is not going to send our military back in unless he has to, unless there’s a clearly defined purpose for it,” Vance told reporters after speaking at Naval Air Station Oceana in Virginia Beach, Va. “If we’ve got to do more, of course, that’s kind of up to the Iranians. If they try to rebuild their nuclear program, if they try to start shooting at commercial vessels again, that’s going to change our calculus.”

He added: “But right now what the president has said is, go and make a deal, go and negotiate in good faith, and that’s what he’s empowered us to do.”

The U.S. has been in a tenuous ceasefire with Iran since April after it spent seven weeks bombing the Middle Eastern country over what the Trump administration has claimed is an untenable nuclear ambition.

The two sides have since agreed to a 60-day window to finish hammering out the details of a peace plan reached on June 17, when President Trump signed a 14-point memorandum of understanding with Tehran seeking to bring an end to the conflict.

Middle East envoy Steve Witkoff and Trump’s son-in-law Jared Kushner are currently in Doha for negotiations with their counterparts, led by Pakistan and Qatar, but the talks are technical and not direct.

Trump has made the removal of Iran’s highly enriched uranium a top priority of the conflict, telling reporters on Wednesday that “the denuclearization of ​Iran is moving along well.”

“They’ve had very good meetings, and we’ll see,” the president said of the talks.

Vance earlier claimed that the administration has already achieved its main objective in Iran, regardless of how the talks in Qatar’s capital unfold.

“We have all the cards in the negotiation,” the vice president told Fox News’s “The Ingraham Angle.”

“We obviously want it to be successful, but even if it’s not successful, we’ve accomplished the core mission, which is to ensure that the Iranians never have a nuclear weapon,” he said.

On Wednesday Vance said that Trump “maintains a lot of options,” including resuming airstrikes against Iran.

Trump earlier this month had laid blame at the feet of Vance should negotiations with Iran turn out poorly.

“If it works out, I’m going to take the credit,” the president told reporters earlier this month. “If it doesn’t work out, I’m blaming JD.”

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Steve Witkoff

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