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Vice President JD Vance has downplayed some concerns that the United States has entered a full-scale war with Iran.
Getting into it: During multiple interviews on Sunday, Vice President JD Vance stressed that the United States is not at war with Iran, but rather engaged in a direct campaign against Iran’s nuclear weapons program. “We’re not at war with Iran,” Vance told NBC’s Meet the Press. “We’re at war with Iran’s nuclear program.” He repeatedly stated that the US does not seek regime change or a broader military conflict, and framed the precision airstrikes on Iran’s nuclear facilities as a targeted national security measure. “The president has been very clear: We have no interest in a protracted conflict. We have no interest in boots on the ground,” he said.
Vance praised the execution of the mission, calling it a “very precise, very surgical strike tailored to an American national interest.” He described in detail how US aircraft flew thousands of miles on a 30-plus-hour non-stop mission to deliver a 30,000-pound bomb onto a high-value nuclear target. “No military in the world has the training, the skills, and the equipment to do what these guys did last night,” he said. Vance noted that the US had previously attempted diplomacy with Iran until mid-May, after which President Trump issued “private ultimatums.” After diplomacy failed, Vance said, “the president and I felt we had to act to ensure Iran would not develop a nuclear weapon.”
Commenting on the status of Iran’s nuclear infrastructure, Vance was more cautious than President Trump, who said that Fordow, Natanz, and Isfahan were “completely and totally obliterated.” He said, “I’m not going to get into sensitive intelligence about what we’ve seen on the ground…but we’ve seen a lot, and I feel very confident that we’ve substantially delayed their development of a nuclear weapon, and that was the goal of this attack.”
When asked directly about the Fordow site, he said, “We feel very confident that the Fordow nuclear site was substantially set back and that was our goal.” In a separate interview on ABC’s This Week, Vance declined to distinguish between “severely damaged” and “obliterated,” saying, “I’m not exactly sure what the difference is… what we know is we set their nuclear program back substantially.”
Vance also issued warnings against any retaliatory action from Iran. He said, “My message to the Iranians is it would be the stupidest thing in the world” to respond with military force, warning that any retaliation would be met with “overwhelming force.” He also said that targeting US troops or disrupting key shipping lanes like the Strait of Hormuz would be a “catastrophic mistake” and “suicidal” for Iran, given how essential that route is to the Iranian economy.
