Vice President JD Vance told reporters early Sunday morning that talks between the United States and Iran failed to reach an agreement for a permanent cease-fire.
President Donald Trump announced a two-week pause in military strikes Tuesday hours before an 8 p.m. deadline for Iran to agree to a series of terms expired. Vance led the delegation for the talks days after a two-day visit to Hungary, joined by Special Envoy Steve Witkoff and Jared Kushner — the president’s son-in-law who helped negotiate the Abraham Accords.
“Let me say a couple of notes of appreciation, first of all, to the Prime Minister of Pakistan and to Field Marshal [Asim] Munir, who were both incredible hosts and whatever shortcomings of the negotiation, it wasn’t because of the Pakistanis who did an amazing job and really tried to help us and the Iranians bridge the gap and get to a deal,” Vance told reporters. “We have been at it now for 21 hours and we’ve had a number of substantive discussions with the Iranians. That’s the good news.”
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“The bad news is that we have not reached an agreement — and I think that’s bad news for Iran much more than it’s bad news for the United States of America,” Vance continued.
Since a March 21 Truth Social post, Trump made multiple threats to target Iranian power plants if the theocratic regime did not halt efforts to close the Strait of Hormuz, but he has granted reprieves based on the progress of negotiations.
“I don’t want to negotiate in public after we negotiated for 21 hours in private, but the simple fact is that we need to see an affirmative commitment that they [Iran] will not seek a nuclear weapon and they will not seek the tools that would enable them to quickly achieve a nuclear weapon,” Vance told a reporter who asked why the talks ultimately failed. “That is the core goal of the President of the United States and that’s what we’ve tried to achieve through these negotiations.”
“Again, their nuclear programs, such as it is, the enrichment facilities that they had before, they’ve been destroyed,” Vance continued. “But the simple question is, do we see a fundamental commitment of will for the Iranians not to develop a nuclear weapon, not just now, not just two years from now, but for the long term? We haven’t seen that yet. We hope that we will.”
The United States struck facilities in Fordow, Natanz and Isfahan related to Iran’s effort to develop nuclear weapons in June, using GBU-57 Massive Ordnance Penetrators dropped by B-2A Spirit stealth bombers. Witkoff told Fox News host Sean Hannity during a March 2 interview that Iranian diplomats declared their intent to continue enriching uranium and claimed that they already had enough material to construct 11 dirty bombs in negotiations that took place before Operation Epic Fury began on Feb. 28.
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