Vance defends US-Iran deal, scolds Israeli hawks
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- JD Vance criticized Israeli far-right ministers Bezalel Smotrich and Itamar Ben-Gvir in a New York Times interview, telling Israel: "You're a country of nine million people. You can't just kill your way out of solving every single national security problem."
- Donald Trump, speaking from the G7 Summit in France, also criticized Israel's rules of engagement, saying: "You don't have to knock down an apartment house every time you're looking for somebody."
- The memorandum of understanding opens the Strait of Hormuz, lifts the US naval blockade of Iranian ports, and includes immediate sanctions waivers on Iran's fossil fuel industry plus pledges from the US and regional partners to create a $300bn reconstruction fund.
- Democrats and a handful of Republicans have criticized the deal as favoring Tehran, arguing the war yielded no meaningful concessions unattainable through prior diplomacy.
- Vance framed the war as a US victory regardless of upcoming negotiations, citing Iran's degraded nuclear capacity, set-back conventional military, and weakened economy.
- The agreement leaves Iran's nuclear program unresolved for 60 days of negotiations — with Iran to dilute highly enriched uranium "on site" — and does not address Iran's ballistic weapons or regional proxy support.
- Vance backed away from prior administration pledges to destroy Iran's ballistic weapons capabilities, saying: "You can't tell a country, whether Israel or Iran, they're not allowed to have any self-defence."
Why it matters: Vance and Trump are applying public, rhetorical pressure on Israel — an unusual break from reflexive alignment — to accept a deal that defers the hardest questions about Iran's nuclear program, ballistic missiles, and proxy networks to 60 more days of talks. Israel hawks who pushed for continued war now have no concrete concession to point to, and Vance has already conceded that destroying Iran's missile program is off the table.
