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Former Vice President Mike Pence has called on President Trump to go into Iran alongside Israel and finish the war outright.

Getting into it: During an appearance on CNN’s “State of the Union” Sunday, speaking from Kyiv during a trip to meet with Ukrainian officials, Pence told host Dana Bash that Iran’s leadership still does not accept what has happened to it, and that no settlement is coming until it does. “It’s going to be absolutely imperative that we keep the pressure on, and that we keep the military assets in the region to be able to take the action that I believe is going to be inevitable,” Pence said.

“The time’s going to come sooner rather than later when the president and our ally Israel are going to have to go in and finish the job,” he said, adding, “You don’t make peace with your enemy. You make peace with your defeated enemy.”

He pointed to Iranian President Masoud Pezeshkian’s weekend remarks as proof the regime has not gotten the message. “We are not going to bow our heads,” Pezeshkian said. “We are not going to come humiliated before the enemy. We can stand with power but with logic, and solve our problems.” Pence has been pushing this line for weeks, telling Fox News earlier this month that the time had come to unleash the armed forces and that his old running mate would reach a point where he stopped seeing any value in talks. He also called the proposed memorandum of understanding appeasement and warned that sanctions relief would hand the Iranian government a lifeline.

This comes as the war is closing in on its sixth month after Trump and his Cabinet predicted it would wrap in weeks. Trump’s original goals were built around stripping out what was left of Iran’s nuclear program and getting rid of the enriched material still sitting there, but the war has since collapsed into a fight over the Strait of Hormuz.

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The administration is going the other direction from Pence, at least for now. Trump announced on Truth Social last week that the most crushing economic sanctions are set to hit Iran today and that anyone who helps Iran would be hit with “TREMENDOUS Economic Consequences.” Trump called his upcoming moves “economic D-Day” and said that the United States needed “all of our allies to stand with the United States of America to isolate, and defeat, the Iran threat.”

The strategy runs on trade restrictions, financial isolation, and pressure on allies to choke off oil smuggling, front companies, and the transfer networks Iran has used for years to blunt sanctions.

More to come.

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