US Vice-President JD Vance has said Iran having an atomic weapon would trigger a “nuclear arms race” worldwide and asserted that the US was “locked and loaded” to restart military operations if Tehran failed to reach a peace deal.
Vance’s remarks at a press conference at the White House on Tuesday came a day after President Donald Trump put off the decision to resume strikes on Iran at the request of Arab nations, including Qatar and the UAE, who said that Tehran was being “reasonable” in peace talks.
“We think the Iranians want to make a deal. The president of the United States has asked us to negotiate in good faith. And that’s exactly what we’ve done,” the vice-president said.
But Vance warned that diplomacy will not come at the cost of Trump’s key demand that Iran never obtain a nuclear weapon. “So, as the president just told me, we’re locked and loaded,” Vance said, adding that he had a meeting with Trump before coming to the press briefing.
“We don't want to go down that pathway. But the president is willing and able to go down that pathway if we have to,” the vice-president said. Vance said the US has a “simple proposition” and there are “two paths to go down”.
“Iran cannot have a nuclear weapon,” he said, adding that if Tehran acquired one, it would send other nations “scrambling” to get their own, setting off a “nuclear arms race”.
“Iran would really be the first domino in what would set off a nuclear arms race all over the world. If the Iranians did get a nuclear weapon, we know that a lot of nations all across the Gulf would then want their own nuclear weapon, and then a lot of nations all across the world,” Vance said.
“As the father of three young kids, I don't want them to inherit a world where 20 additional regimes—half of them very dangerous and very sympathetic to terrorists—have nuclear weapons,” he said.
“We want to keep the number of countries that have nuclear weapons small, and that's why Iran cannot have a nuclear weapon. On top of all the other things that we might be worried about, that they themselves could use it, that they could use it as leverage in economic control or economic negotiations. We just don't want them to have a nuclear weapon,” Vance said.
“There’s an option B, and the option B is that we could restart the military campaign to continue to prosecute the case, to continue to try to achieve America’s objectives,” Vance said. “But that’s not what the president wants. And I don’t think it’s what the Iranians want either,” he said, adding that there’s an opportunity to reset the Washington-Tehran relationship, “but it takes two to tango”.
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