Vice President JD Vance said Iran agreed to allow international inspections of its nuclear program, which would restore a safeguard from President Barack Obama’s deal with Tehran that President Donald Trump threw out.
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“That is a major milestone for the American people, and the first step in permanently denuclearizing or permanently ending a nuclear weapons program in Iran,” Vance said Monday at a news conference at the Bürgenstock resort in Switzerland. U.S. and Iranian officials are working with mediators from Qatar and Pakistan to turn last week’s fragile ceasefire into a more comprehensive peace agreement. Vance said he would return home soon as technical talks moved forward.
The Iranians threatened to walk out Sunday after Trump warned the U.S. may “hit Iran very hard again,” Vance said. But the negotiators stayed past 1 a.m. local time, and their team of technical experts was still present, Vance said.
“What we told the Iranians yesterday is when you guys engage in what us millennials might call trash talk, you can’t expect the president of the United States not to respond and not to correct the record,” Vance said. He denied that Trump’s threat threw “a wrench into the system.”
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The ceasefire memorandum that Trump signed at the Palace of Versailles on Wednesday gave the U.S. and Iran 60 days to resolve their hardest disputes, including the fate of Iran’s uranium stockpile and the Strait of Hormuz. Over the weekend, Israeli attacks in Lebanon tested the deal as Iran threatened to close the strait, a major choke point for global oil and gas shipments.
Vance on Monday said negotiators were in contact with officials from Israel and Lebanon, as well as Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates, and were working to set up a direct line of communication to address conflicts. He said Israel’s troop presence in southern Lebanon was still being discussed and would require coordination with the Lebanese armed forces and Iranian pressure on Hezbollah.
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