Vice President J.D. Vance said Monday the pending U.S.-Iran peace deal is good for the American people, and the U.S. maintains “all the cards” if Tehran does not fulfill its end of the bargain.
“We don’t have to give the Iranians anything if they don’t make the commitments we want, long-term, on the nuclear program,” Mr. Vance told CNBC.
Mr. Trump said a signing ceremony will take place on Friday to reopen the Strait of Hormuz and lift the U.S. blockade on Iranian ports. Those moves should alleviate pressure on both countries’ economies.
Oil prices dropped early Monday, settling around $80 per barrel, down from above $100 per barrel at the height of the war.
The U.S. and Iran will now enter into a 60-day negotiation period. During that time, the parties will negotiate a comprehensive agreement concerning the future of Tehran’s nuclear program, its support for proxies and further sanctions relief.
Critics said the deal merely returned the world to the pre-war status quo and could result in sanctions relief for an Iranian regime that remains largely in place.
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Mr. Vance said that “even if we stopped here,” the U.S. delivered a massive blow to Iran’s military and decimated its nuclear abilities by hitting its stores of enriched uranium.
Mr. Vance said the U.S. has found willing negotiators inside Iran, moving beyond the fractured system that dogged past administrations.
“We have some good relationships there. This is going to be a successful negotiation because we’re not passing messages through various backchannels anymore, we’re actually talking to them,” Mr. Vance said.
The vice president said it will be up to Iran to decide whether it wants to reopen its economy and extend its hand to the wider world.
“If you guys want to change your relationship with the United States, we will change our relationship with Iran,” Mr. Vance said. “That’s the offer, and we’re going to have to see if they meet us there.”
Mr. Vance said there is a “two-step verification” process in which Iran may receive sanctions relief and access to the economy, though only if it takes clear steps back from nuclear ambitions.
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“If you’re willing to give up that program, long-term … then we want you to be a prosperous country,” Mr. Vance told the “Squawk Box” program.
One sticking point is Israel’s war in Lebanon against the Iran-backed militant group Hezbollah.
Tehran has demanded that any agreement must include a full ceasefire across all fronts and has launched a barrage of ballistic missiles at Israel over its strikes near Beirut last week.
Yet Israel signaled Monday that it has no intentions of stopping combat operations against Hezbollah in Lebanon, despite the U.S.-Iran deal promising a ceasefire on all fronts.
However, Mr. Vance said differences will be resolved once Israel and the broader Middle East start to realize the deal is good for the region.
Some of the details of the deal still need to be hammered out.
For instance, it is unclear if Iran will try to impose tolls on ships transiting the Strait of Hormuz.
“Our expectation is that the strait is going to be opened in a toll-free way for the long term, and that’s the sort of thing that we’re going to figure out in these technical negotiations,” Mr. Vance said.
U.S. officials and leaders around the world say the strait is an international waterway, so imposing tolls would be unprecedented.
