As the US ceasefire with Iran hangs in the balance following another weekend of tit-for-tat hostilities between the two countries, Vice President JD Vance is articulating the view that whatever happens, “America wins either way”.
The man who is a heartbeat away from the presidency is touring the United States, promoting a new memoir about his decision to convert to the Catholic faith. Few interviews have been more toe-curling than his appearance on HBO’s weekly talk show hosted by comedian and political commentator Bill Maher.
“If we make the final deal, then great,” Vance said of ongoing negotiations with Iran that are now in significant jeopardy as the two sides accuse one another of breaching the 14-point Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) signed just over a week ago. “If we don’t make the final deal, their nuclear programme is still destroyed. They’re still much weaker as a country. So my attitude is America wins either way.”
It is always tempting to look at life through rose-tinted spectacles. While the Vice President’s claim might make good material for a satirical monologue on late night TV, the administration’s critics argue it does not contain the ingredients for a mature national security strategy.
At a stroke, Vance revealed the hollow nature of Trump’s existing agreement with the Iranians and raised fresh questions about why the war on Iran was ignited on 28 February.
If the 60 days of negotiations set in train by the MOU do not bear fruit, then Iran’s nuclear programme will not have been “destroyed” – unless you believe President Donald Trump’s claims that he succeeded in obliterating Iran’s nuclear programme a year ago during “Operation Midnight Hammer”.
That operation last July is now a millstone around the administration’s neck, because Trump also claimed the whole point of this year’s “Operation Epic Fury” was the urgent need to destroy an Iranian nuclear programme the President claims was suddenly a fortnight away from being able to target Europe and the US.
Trump, seen heading to his Washington golf club on Saturday, has again threatened Iran with destruction (Photo: Aaron Schwartz/Getty Images)Either the Iranians have got a nuclear weapons programme or – as US intelligence contends – they have not. But the notion that “America wins either way” flies in the face of logic. Failed negotiations would certainly leave Iran in possession of a significant stockpile of highly enriched uranium that remains buried deep in the country’s mountainsides, though it would be hard and dangerous to access it.
Perhaps sensing the pickle in which he had placed himself, Vance took to his social media accounts on Friday night and adopted a new position. “Iran signed a ceasefire agreement. We have honoured it. If they have disagreements about how the MOU is being applied, they can pick up the phone. But violence will be met with violence,” he warned.
That tough-guy language appears designed to appeal to his boss, a president who spent the weekend threatening to “militarily complete the job” and wipe out Iran. But the notion that the country can just “pick up the phone” is not entirely factual, given that Pakistani and Qatari negotiators have spent the past week trying to establish a hotline between Tehran and Washington that has not yet borne fruit.
The Qatari Prime Minister described the hotline as essential to counter “disinformation” being promulgated by “people who will try to sabotage” negotiations by making false threats to shipping in the Strait of Hormuz. Iran’s Revolutionary Guard is currently rejecting the idea.
It was not only on Iran that Vance twisted himself up into a pretzel during his interview with Maher. The comedian also challenged the Vice President over Trump’s position that the only free and fair elections in America are those that Republicans win. “That shit has got to stop,” Maher told Vance.
But the Vice President offered his host no assurances, and instead voiced claims that in the 2020 election, “technology companies were putting their thumb on the scale in a way that completely obliterated the real open exchange of facts”. He argued that Joe Biden’s election victory was achieved after unidentified tech companies “were quite literally censoring negative information about the left and promoting negative information about the right”.
None of those claims has ever stood up in any American court.
Vance’s remarks suggest that it remains impossible for anyone in Trump’s inner circle to publicly accept that Republicans could fairly lose this November’s midterm elections. That fuels the possibility of a major constitutional clash at the end of the year if – as they expect – the Democrats romp to victory.
The Vice President’s continuing genuflection before Trump makes it clear: if push comes to shove, Vance will make no attempt to protect the sanctity of American democracy.
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