In a one-on-one interview, Vice President JD Vance tells CBN News the looming agreement with Iran will be good for both America and Israel, although questions remain about whether Iran can really be trusted.
Vance addressed that skepticism and took on critics who say America needs to finish the job.
Vance came to Long Island on Wednesday, preaching a message of fraud prevention. Behind the scenes, the vice president talked to CBN News about the pending agreement with Iran.
Critics are saying the U.S. had the Iranian regime on the ropes, so why not finish the job? You might say it’s like having weeds in your yard. Even if you kill 90% of the weeds, if you don’t get the root of the problem, the weeds are growing back.
“I understand that argument. And what I would say is what is additional military action, which is always on the table – we can always do that, what does the additional military action accomplish for us right now? We could kill more of their leadership, but you’re going to have additional leadership below that,” the vice president said.
“Fundamentally, unless the people who run the country change their behavior over the long term, you’re always going to have this problem. It’s kind of a thorn in the side of the United States of America. And so, what we’re seeing is we’re going to pause here,” he explained.
“They say that they want to do things differently. Let’s give them that opportunity. If they do, great. And if they don’t, we can always go back to the other options.”
Iran’s track record of lying is extensive, as the Islamist concept of taqiyya allows Muslims to lie when being persecuted. I brought that up to the vice president.
“Well, you know, I certainly hope that they’re not lying, but it’s not concerning to me because I don’t really trust anybody,” Vance said. “I am sure that there are people within their system who are not telling us exactly what’s on their mind.”
Tune in to The 700 Club on Thursday at 9 AM for more of CBN’s interview with Vice President JD Vance.
What’s on the minds of many is whether Iran may play nice for now until President Trump leaves office. Meanwhile, they get financial relief, and then what? Are we just allowing them 3 or 4 years to rearm and reboot their nuclear program with the unfrozen money?
“You’re absolutely right that, that if a future Democratic administration let Iran rebuild their nuclear program, there’s nothing we can do about that here and now,” Vance said. “What we can do here now is destroy the program, which we’ve done, and make it impossible for them to rebuild it without it becoming obvious to the inspectors and the entire international community.”
“You never predict what a future Democratic president might do. But this is as good as it could be, given that we can’t control what President AOC, God forbid, would do in the future,” he said.
As for now, a key question will be how they monitor a sneaky regime. What sort of benchmarks will be used to make sure that Iran is not funding some of its terrorist proxies?
“You know, it’s just something that you’re going to see,” he said. “If we see the Iranians sending money to Hezbollah, it’s going to be obvious. And it’s one of these things where we have very good intelligence, we have very good knowledge of what’s going on on the ground. So, we feel quite confident that we’re going to be able to tell whether the Iranians, whether they’re funding terrorism or whether they’re funding power plants and infrastructure. We’re going to know either way.”
Then there’s the issue of Israel and Lebanon. Israel doesn’t want to get out of southern Lebanon as it aims to put an end to Hezbollah’s terrorist strikes. But Iran reportedly says there’s not going to be any deal if Israel doesn’t get out.
Vance said, “So first of all, the deal doesn’t talk about Israel getting out of southern Lebanon or not. But I actually think that Israel would love to get out of southern Lebanon so long as the Hezbollah threat was gone.”
“We’ve been very clear, Israel is allowed the right of self-defense. Nobody’s going to tell another government they’re not allowed to defend their people,” he explained.
I asked him if he feels that Israel is on the side of righteousness, because there’s always a good versus evil battle going on.
“I think it’s important to say, look, Israel’s been a great partner through this. And we’ve got a lot of shared interests,” he said. “What I think is also true is that sometimes the United States and Israel are going to have disagreements, and I think that what some people say is, ‘well, because the United States and Israel have disagreements somehow, Israel’s bad, the United States is good, or vice versa.’ Sometimes you see people in Israel, even after all the president of the United States has done for that region, they’re attacking the president because they don’t like this deal, even though a lot of them don’t know what’s in the deal.”
The vice president concluded, “I really feel like, David, when the people of Israel get to know this deal and hopefully trust what the president is able to accomplish for the region, they’re going to see this is good for the people of Israel. It’s a great country, amazing people. We have a lot of friends who live there. It’s going to be good for the people of Israel.”
