Vice President J.D. Vance highlighted the U.S. military’s destruction of Iran’s nuclear program during an interview on Monday following President Donald Trump’s strikes against the country’s three major nuclear facilities over the weekend.
During a Monday appearance on Fox News’ “Special Report,” Vance was asked by Fox News’ Bret Baier about the president’s announcement that Israel and Iran had agreed to a ceasefire.
“First of all, the president, without, knock on wood, having a single American casualty, obliterated the Iranian nuclear program,” Vance responded. “We are now in a place where we weren’t a week ago. A week ago, Iran was very close to having a nuclear weapon. Now Iran is incapable of building a nuclear weapon with the equipment they have because we destroyed it.”
Vance highlighted Trump’s efforts to promote a path to long-term peace in the Middle East region and to ensure that “the destruction of the Iranian nuclear program that has already happened is not something they try to rebuild.”
Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Gen. Dan Caine confirmed on Sunday that the U.S. military dropped 14 GBU-57 Massive Ordnance Penetrators on Iran’s Fordow and Natanz nuclear facilities and fired over two dozen Tomahawk missiles at Iran’s nuclear Isfahan nuclear facility on Saturday.
Caine explained, “Final battle damage will take some time, but initial battle damage assessments indicate that all three sites sustained extremely severe damage and destruction.”
READ MORE: Videos: Trump drops f-bomb after Israel, Iran violate ceasefire
During Monday’s interview on Fox News, Vance said the destruction of Iran’s nuclear facilities and the Trump administration’s negotiation of a ceasefire agreement between Israel and Iran is a “great thing” in the Middle East.
“For Israel, think about this: they’ve accomplished an important military objective. They’ve helped us destroy the Iranian nuclear program. They’ve also destroyed the conventional missile capability of Iran that threatened the country of Israel,” Vance told Baier. “For the Iranians, I think this is a new opportunity to actually pursue the path of peace.”
Vance explained that by supporting “terror networks” and failing to develop a nuclear weapon, Iran has shown that “they’re just not very good at war.”
“And I think the president really hit the reset button and said, look, let’s actually produce long-term peace for the region,” Vance added. “That’s always been his goal. I actually think when we look back, we will say the 12-day war was an important reset moment for the entire region.”
