JD Vance appeared to slam the Supreme Leader of Iran as one of the “worst people in the world” as the Trump administration continues to claim victory on its recent strikes despite evidence suggesting otherwise.
In a keynote address at a Ohio Republican Party dinner on Tuesday, the vice president insisted Trump had a long history of speaking out against Iran having access to a nuclear weapon.
“It’s very simple,” Vance told the GOP crowd. “It destabilizes the entire region. It gives this terrible regime leverage over the United States of America.”
Vance recalled a recent incident in the White House, where he and the president were discussing Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, the Supreme Leader of Iran.
“‘That’s a pretty amazing title if you think about it,’” Vance said he told the president at the time. “But (Trump) looked at me in the Situation Room a few days ago, and he said, `Mr. Vice President, you don’t have to call him the Supreme Leader, but you would if the guy had a nuclear weapon’.”
Vance continued, “Because the leverage that nuclear weapons give you to destabilize the world to destroy our economic interests, to destroy our national security interests… you don’t want the worst people in the world to have a nuclear weapon.”
The vice president then claimed Trump “negotiated aggressively” to encourage Iran to give up their nuclear weapons peacefully, insisting the president was “more than willing to accept a peaceful settlement to that problem.”
He continued, “When the president realized that there was not gonna be a peaceful settlement to that problem, he sent B2 bombers and dropped 12, 30,000 pound bombs on the worst facility and destroyed that program.”
“Not only did we destroy the Iranian nuclear program, we did it with zero American casualties,” Vance continued. “That’s what happens when you’ve got strong American leadership.”
Vance’s comments are in stark contrast to a CNN report which suggests that the U.S strikes did not actually destroy the core components of Iran’s nuclear program, and it would back up and running in a few months.
On Tuesday, Iran they would resume their nuclear program “without interruption.”
The White House dismissed that report, with press secretary Karoline Leavitt claiming it was leaked by a “low level loser” to undermine Donald Trump. CNN responded by saying it “stands by our thorough reporting on an early intelligence assessment.”
In another part of his 35-minute address, Vance weighed in on the divide in the GOP over Trump’s military involvement with Israel and Iran.
“I think there are a lot of Republicans, by the way, I count myself among them, who, after the past 25 years, they don’t want to get involved in another long term protracted Middle Eastern conflict,” Vance said.
He also outlined a “Trump doctrine” hours after floating a “new foreign policy doctrine” on X.
“What I call the Trump Doctrine is quite simple: Number one, you articulate a clear American interest and that’s, in this case, that Iran can’t have a nuclear weapon,” Vance said. “Number two, you try to aggressively diplomatically solve that problem. And number three, when you can’t solve it diplomatically, you use overwhelming military power to solve it and then you get the hell out of there before it ever becomes a protracted conflict.”
