Vice President JD Vance expressed frustration with Iran “hawks” in an interview with Joe Rogan, arguing opponents of diplomacy with Iran have undermined the Trump administration’s negotiations.
Vance has long been a skeptic of U.S. military interventions. President Trump said publicly in March that Vance was “philosophically a little bit different than me” on the war with Iran, and was “maybe less enthusiastic about going.” In his interview with Rogan, Vance broadly defended Mr. Trump’s Iran strategy, but pushed back on some more hawkish voices.
“I’m very frustrated by the Americans and, frankly, by people in other countries who are like, ‘You cannot negotiate with the Iranians,'” he said. “Well, then, what is your proposal to get people to stop shooting at ships in the Strait of Hormuz? You can bomb them, you can take away their radar, you can take away some of their drones and some of their missiles, but it’s just too easy to fire at ships in the strait. So you’ve got to actually be willing to talk and to try to figure out the problem.”
Vance also argued “hawks” had “misrepresented” and “lied about” the U.S.-Iran memorandum of understanding by arguing it would give Iran much-needed sanctions relief. Vance and other Trump administration officials have insisted that Iran will only get relief it if meets its obligations.
“It’s completely made up, and it was done purely in order to politically tank the negotiation,” Vance said. “So there’s been this interesting dynamic here, where as we’ve been trying to negotiate, there have been these extraordinarily well-funded efforts to tank the negotiation, to prevent us from reaching a deal, to change American public opinion.”
