Vice President JD Vance said the United States is “very close to achieving” a peace deal with Iran and that a final agreement could “absolutely” be reached before the November midterm elections, according to an interview with CBS. The remarks were taped Tuesday and set to air later this week.
“Right now, I feel that we are in a position to get a deal that is good for the United States economically and that really does deal with the Iranian nuclear program,” Vance said.
“Not just now, not just while Donald Trump is president, but for the long term, to where my kids can say when they’re adults: ‘Iran is not going to have a nuclear weapon,’” Vance continued. “That’s the goal of the policy. And I think we’re very close to achieving that goal. But we [have] still got some wood to chop. We’re going to keep doing it.”
The vice president said he anticipated that “we’re going to know a lot before the midterm elections,” adding: “I think that the deal could happen in the next week, but the deal could also happen months from now.”
Shortly after 5 p.m. ET on Tuesday, U.S. Central Command announced it had begun launching “self-defense strikes” against Iran in response to the downing of an Apache helicopter near the Strait of Hormuz a day earlier. “The mission is a proportional response to unjustified Iranian aggression,” Centcom said in a social media post.
Earlier Tuesday, President Donald Trump wrote on Truth Social that the U.S. “must, of necessity, respond to the attack” but also said there was a “good chance” of signing an agreement with Iran “in two or three days.” That phrasing echoed Vance’s assessment, marking yet another instance of the administration simultaneously signaling imminent military action and imminent diplomatic resolution — a pattern that has recurred since the U.S.-Israel war against Iran began in February.
MSI previously reported that Trump, as recently as June 4, said he would not resume all-out war in Iran unless U.S. troops were killed, while the military has continued daily operations against Iranian targets.
The U.S. and Israel launched a war against Iran in February, triggering retaliatory Iranian strikes against U.S. Gulf allies, a blockade of the Strait of Hormuz, rising global energy costs, and a fragile ceasefire that has frequently been violated.
Since the conflict began, the Trump administration has repeatedly claimed that it is close to a deal with Iran. Trump has also accused Tehran of trying to “outwait” him until the midterm elections. Last month, Trump told cabinet members: “They thought they were going to outwait me, you know, ‘We’ll outwait him, he’s got the midterms’ … I don’t care about the midterms.”
Iran has acknowledged that discussions with the U.S. are continuing but that no final agreement has been reached. Iran’s parliamentary speaker and top negotiator, Mohammad Bagher Ghalibaf, condemned continued U.S. and Israeli strikes, saying the U.S. is “neither committed to a ceasefire nor believe in dialogue, and through the naval blockade and violation of agreements regarding Lebanon they showed that they only understand the language of power.” Ghalibaf said U.S. bases and assets across the region had become “legitimate targets.”
The talks have been further complicated by Israeli strikes across Beirut, which drew retaliatory Iranian strikes in response.
In an interview with NBC this week, Trump outlined that the U.S. would cooperate with Iran on destroying its uranium stockpile if a deal is reached and would take the material off-site if necessary. “If we make a deal that now we’re friendly, we’ll all go together. It’ll be our equipment. We’ll take it out and destroy it, whether it’s on site or whether we take it off site,” Trump said. “Now, if we don’t make a deal, then we’re going to take them out militarily very harshly. And we’ll wait till we do that before we go, in which case we’ll have safety either way.”
Secretary of State Marco Rubio detailed the administration’s demands for a deal during congressional testimony last week, including “severe and long-term limitations” on Iran’s nuclear program.