'Wake Up and Smell the Reality': JD Vance Warns Israel to Abide by Trump’s Iran Deal
· Time
Vice President JD Vance on Thursday issued a stark warning for the Israeli government to get on board with President Donald Trump’s controversial agreement with Iran, suggesting Israel had alienated much of the globe in recent years and that the U.S. was its last remaining major ally.
“If I was in the cabinet of the Israeli government, I might not be attacking the only powerful ally that I have anywhere left in the entire world,” Vance said near the end of an hourlong White House briefing with reporters.
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The remarks were the most public display of how much the Trump Administration's relationship with Israeli leadership has grown increasingly acrimonious since the U.S. and Israel jointly launched a war against Iran nearly four months ago.
Vance spent most of the briefing defending the Iran deal, which Israel was not a direct party to but commits the country to halting its missile attacks in Southern Lebanon while resuscitating Iran’s economy through lifting its crude oil sanctions. In exchange, Iran agreed to reopen the Strait of Hormuz and promised to not to produce any nuclear weapons.
The signing of the MOU began a 60-day negotiation that could lead to the set up of a $300 billion rehabilitation fund for Iran’s economic development.
Israeli officials have expressed “deep concern” about the deal, according to Axios,. A Netanyahu adviser said Israel doesn't consider itself bound by the Lebanon part of the memorandum .
While Netanyahu himself has not made any public comments about the deal since the signing of the memorandum, Israeli media outlets aligned with Netanyahu have criticized Trump and his team, accusing Trump's envoys Steve Witkoff and Jared Kushner of selling out Israel for financial gain.
In response to those attacks, Vance pointed out that two-thirds of Israel’s defense weapons have been built and paid for by Americans and that the problem for Israel “is not Donald Trump.”
“Anybody in Israel who thinks their biggest problem is the President of the United States needs to wake up and smell the reality of the situation in that country,” he added.
Vance also said the Trump administration has spoken to the Israeli government as well as members in the Gulf Coast “pretty much every day,” and he said he did not hear those concerns during his conversations he had with senior Israeli officials.
Vance also criticized Israel’s recent decision to launch deadly strikes in Beirut as the U.S. was on the verge of major breakthroughs in the Iran deal negotiations. He said many people who were killed in those strikes “have nothing to do with Hezbollah,” the terrorist organization that Israel claims to have been targeting.
“Our message to the Israelis—just as our message to everybody else—is, fundamentally, we want this peace process to be good for you.” Vance said. “We do not want Hezbollah attacking Israel, but in order to ensure that that happens, we have got to actually build the kind of regional framework that can…cut off Iranian support for Hezbollah, and also ensure that Lebanon's territorial sovereignty is respected by all parties.”
Comparison to Obama Deal
Throughout the negotiations to reach a ceasefire, Trump officials have faced comparisons to President Barack Obama’s 2015 Iran deal, also known as the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA), which Trump exited in 2018. Asked on Thursday about that comparison, Vance said Trump’s deal was an improvement, arguing that it is broadly welcomed by the Gulf countries because “it makes Iran weaker,” while Obama’s deal strengthened Iran’s power. He also claimed several substantive differences between the two deals.
“Obama nuclear deal allowed enrichment; ours will not. The Obama deal allowed the accumulation of stockpiled weapons-grade material; ours is actually leading to the destruction of that stockpile of enriched material,” Vance said. While the JCPOA allowed Iran to conduct low-level enrichment, the deal explicitly prohibited the accumulation of stockpiled weapons-grade material, according to Center for Arms Control and Non-Proliferation, a nonpartisan thinktank.
The vice president also stressed that under the JCPOA, the US paid Iran $1.7 billion in cash while the current deal would require no payment from the U.S. to Iran. He did not offer an explanation on who exactly will be paying for the $300 billion rehabilitation fund, only saying that the fund will only be made available if Iran displayed “transformational behavior.” Trump has insisted none of the money for such a fund would come from U.S. taxpayer dollars.
The $300 billion fund, along with the lifting of Iran’s sanctions on crude oil, has drawn immediate backlash from Republican allies since the release of the memo. Senate Arms Service Committee Chairman Roger Wicker of Mississippi added to the criticism on Thursday, saying in a statement that the money Iran stands to get from Trump’s deal makes Obama’s deal “look like a pittance by comparison.”
“I am concerned that the memorandum of understanding negotiates away the victories of Operation Epic Fury in ways that are completely out of step with the President’s goals,” Wicker said.
A day earlier, Republican Sen. Bill Cassidy of Louisiana, said on X that Trump’s memorandum is the “worst policy blunder in a decade.”
“Reagan is rolling over in his grave. Iran’s nuclear ambitions were not curbed, and they have learned that threatening the Strait of Hormuz works and will undoubtedly leverage it in the future,” he said.