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Vice President JD Vance has indicated that the United States may take action to halt Iran’s uranium enrichment program.
Some shit you should know before you read: Over the last few days, Israel has significantly degraded Iran’s nuclear capabilities through targeted strikes on infrastructure linked to uranium enrichment; however, the Fordow Fuel Enrichment Plant remains untouched. Buried beneath roughly 260 feet of rock inside a mountain near Qom, Fordow is one of Iran’s most fortified and secretive nuclear facilities, housing advanced IR-6 centrifuges capable of enriching uranium to near weapons-grade levels. Its deep underground location makes it impenetrable to most strikes, and despite Israel’s advanced air power, they currently lack the heavy-duty ordnance (such as the US-developed GBU-57 Massive Ordnance Penetrator) necessary to destroy deeply buried targets like Fordow. This bomb weighs approximately 30,000 pounds and is designed specifically to penetrate fortified underground facilities. To effectively neutralize Fordow, US military cooperation would be required.
What’s going on now: Vice President JD Vance has taken to social media to defend President Donald Trump’s approach to the escalating conflict between Israel and Iran, pushing back against skepticism within the MAGA movement about potential US involvement. In a detailed post on X, Vance stated, “First, POTUS has been amazingly consistent, over 10 years, that Iran cannot have a nuclear weapon,” stressing that Trump had “encouraged his foreign policy team to reach a deal with the Iranians” but left open the possibility of military action. “He may decide he needs to take further action to end Iranian enrichment. That decision ultimately belongs to the president,” Vance wrote.
Vance also acknowledged public fears about deeper foreign entanglements, noting, “People are right to be worried about foreign entanglement after the last 25 years of idiotic foreign policy,” but insisted Trump “has earned some trust on this issue.”
The Vice President’s comments came in response to growing dissent from prominent MAGA-aligned voices, including former Trump adviser Steve Bannon and commentator Tucker Carlson, both of whom have warned that military involvement in the Iran-Israel conflict could fracture the Trump coalition. On Carlson’s podcast, Bannon said, “If we get sucked into this war… it’s going to not just blow up the coalition, it’s also gonna thwart what we’re doing with the most important thing, which is the deportation of the illegal alien invaders.” Carlson himself doubled down earlier this week, saying involvement in the conflict could mean “the end of the American empire” and “effectively” end Trump’s presidency.
Trump fired back on the criticism, referring to Carlson as “Kooky” and suggesting he “get a television network and say it so that people listen.”
Despite the intraparty friction, there remains strong support among other Republicans for a more aggressive posture toward Iran. Senator Lindsey Graham, a longtime foreign policy hawk, has publicly advocated for direct US strikes on Iranian targets, arguing that “the only thing the Iranians understand is force.”
