(AFP) – US Vice President JD Vance told Iran on Wednesday to take Washington’s threats of military action “seriously,” a day after President Donald Trump appeared to build the case for war in his State of the Union address. As US forces mass in the Middle East, Trump claimed in his speech to Congress on Tuesday that Iran was seeking to develop missiles that can strike the United States.
Trump also accused the Islamic republic, whose negotiators will meet US officials in Geneva on Thursday, of having “sinister nuclear ambitions” and working to rebuild a nuclear program that was targeted by US strikes last year. Vance said that while Trump was going to try to get Iran to make a deal “diplomatically,” the US president also had the “right” to use military action. “You can’t let the craziest and worst regime in the world have nuclear weapons,” Vance told “America’s Newsroom” on Fox News.
Iran has repeatedly denied that it is seeking to acquire nuclear weapons and has rejected Trump’s claims about its missile program as “big lies.” “The president has a number of other tools at his disposal to ensure this doesn’t happen,” said Vance. “He’s shown a willingness to use them, and I hope the Iranians take it seriously in the negotiations tomorrow because that’s certainly what the president prefers.”
The US vice president said the Trump administration was “hopeful that we’re able to come to a good resolution without the military, but if we have to use the military the president of course has that right as well.” His comments came as the United States announced fresh sanctions targeting Iran, pressing on with what Washington calls its “maximum pressure” campaign.
Iran’s President Masoud Pezeshkian earlier struck an upbeat tone, saying there was a “favorable outlook” for the negotiations as his Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi and his team arrived in Switzerland. But while Trump said he preferred a diplomatic solution, he also set out what appeared to be the justifications for possible military action in the first State of the Union address of his second term.
It was the same forum in which then-president George W. Bush laid out the case for the invasion of Iraq in 2003. Trump claimed in his address that Tehran had “already developed missiles that can threaten Europe and our bases overseas, and they’re working to build missiles that will soon reach the United States of America.”
The United States is also demanding that Iran agree that any future nuclear deal should remain in effect indefinitely, the Axios news outlet quoted Trump’s envoy Steve Witkoff as telling a private gathering on Tuesday. Under the previous 2015 nuclear deal with Iran, which Trump tore up during his first term in office in 2018, the restrictions on Iran’s program were due to expire over a number of years. Iran insists its nuclear program is for civilian purposes.
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