VP Vance Travels to Switzerland For Next Round of Iran Talks
Center Left
Vice President JD Vance and his negotiating team are in Switzerland for a new round of talks over the war in Iran. President Donald Trump said that if there is not a deal within 60 days, he will impose tolls on the Strait of Hormuz. NBC’s Keir Simmons reports for Sunday TODAY.
U.S. and Iranian officials met in Switzerland Sunday ahead of negotiations to solidify the tentative peace deal between Washington and Tehran and bring about an end to the U.S. war against Iran, but according to one expert, President Donald Trump and his administration are ignoring a pressing issue that risks blowing up talks before they’ve even started.“I'd be surprised to be that optimistic,” said Richard Haas, former policy director at the State Department, during an appearance Sunday on MS NOW when asked about his thoughts on the likelihood of peace talks succeeding.The pressing issue, Haas warned, was Israel’s ongoing bombardment and occupation of Lebanon, which since March has killed nearly 4,000 Lebanese, wounded close to 12,000 and sparked a humanitarian crisis affecting more than one million people. In the first clause of the tentative peace deal agreed to by Washington and Tehran, a provision explicitly calls for Israel to end its military operations in Lebanon.“What happens if and when Iran demands that Israel vacate Lebanon altogether, that Israel not go back into Lebanon?” Haas said. “That is going to be something of a red line for Israel, and the question is what does the United States do? Do we put pressure on Israel, or do we tell Iran 'no way?' So there's no way you can solve the Lebanon issue once and for all, this has been an open problem for decades and it's going to continue to be one of the many things that's going to really bedevil these negotiations going on.”Trump has tried to pressure Israel to halt – or at least shrink – its military operations in Lebanon, but has been refuted by Israel each time.
Vice President JD Vance is facing online mockery after a boast about the recent Iran deal backfired.Vance went on Fox & Friends Weekend on Saturday morning to tout Trump's new Iran deal. He told the Fox program, "My understanding, talking to Steve and Jared this morning, is that things are going well," referring to Steve Witkoff and Jared Kushner."The United States has all the cards," Vance continued. "The straits are now open."Less than a few hours after he made those comments, Iran closed the Strait of Hormuz, and online commentators let him have it."How humiliating," writer Polly Sigh reacted on X."Steve and Jared - the two who completely bungled these negotiations from the start which led us into this mess," added MeidasTouch, a political news network."Talking to Steve and Jared. Good lord," wrote Missouri Democratic congressional candidate Fred Wellman."He's not a particularly good liar," veteran journalist Bill Kristol said. "But he's certainly a shameless one.""Believe nothing that comes out of his mouth," Middle East and geopolitical analyst Matthew RJ Brodsky posted."Trump has given Vance enough rope to hang himself," economist and author Anders Aslund wrote. "Witkoff and Kushner are no negotiators, nor knowledgeable. The US has no cards.""We said Uno. Iran said Draw Four," writer and podcaster Hemant Mehta posted, playing off Vance's card metaphor."It might be time to retire the 'we have all the cards' metaphor," University of Ottawa professor Roland Paris suggested. "Given how obviously the administration is being outplayed by those who supposedly don't have any cards."Norman Ornstein, a political scientist and contributing editor for The Atlantic, simply reacted, "Hahahahahahahahaha."
If you sat down and tried to invent the worst possible person to put in charge of negotiating with the Islamic Republic of Iran — and obviously Donald Trump doesn’t count — you'd have no recourse but to choose JD Vance.If you didn’t know, and he takes every single opportunity to tell you, he’s the vice president of the United States. And your worst expectations will be met, because he’s leading the way when it comes to negotiating with the wily and wicked Iranian government.Vance, remember he’s the vice president, is fresh off a book tour for Communion, his memoir about finding his way to Catholicism. I am a lifelong Catholic and, like the Iran negotiations, if I have to invent the worst possible person to explain Catholicism to me, it would again be JD Vance.This joke of a negotiator and deity is now the face of the most consequential American diplomacy with Iran since arguably 1979. And this joke of a man and his reborn righteousness is now tasked to talk down a regime that has spent four decades building its identity around resisting and rebelling against American foreign policy.It's hard to imagine a worse match of temperament to task.I don’t know about you, but I had to pick myself up off the floor when I watched Vance’s press conference from the White House on Thursday. When asked what qualifies him to sit across from Iranian officials, Vance told reporters Joy Behar — who interviewed him on The View earlier in the week — is "way tougher than the Iranians," and that the two are "best friends now."To say that statement was baffling, bizarre, and ridiculous would be the understatement that trashes all understatements.Never mind that Behar, and her cohorts at The View, spent the interview grilling him over Trump calling the affordability crisis "a hoax" while Vance scrambled to spin it. The idea that sparring with an 83-year-old daytime talk show host is preparation for negotiating Iran's nuclear program is the kind of line that should disqualify a student from a high school Diplomacy 101 class.All I could think was that the Iranian delegation heard that quote — they hear everything — and jumped up and down at the prospect of going toe to toe with a neophyte negotiator.Negotiators who have outlasted six American presidents being told their toughest opponent in Washington uses Joy Behar as his measuring stick. It's not really an insult to Behar. In my previous career as a media relations guy for Kmart and Sears, we had several opportunities to interact, and Behar is as lovely as she is sharp and quick-witted.But tougher than Iran? It sounds like a self-deprecating remark Behar would make about herself.But those words from Vance are shocking. It's an admission. If you need a co-host of The View to prep you for the Strait of Hormuz, you've already lost the negotiation before it started.None of this would really matter much if Vance were just a motormouthed mouthpiece, which he is on his best days. But this? He's leading the actual talks, alongside Steve Witkoff and Jared Kushner, for an agreement that's supposed to reopen the Strait of Hormuz, restart nuclear inspections, and release frozen Iranian funds during a 60-day window before a final deal gets signed.Vance has spent days insisting the money picture is being overstated, even as Iran's own Revolutionary Guard puts out its own numbers. They are going to twist him in so many directions, and it should worry all of us that Vance is way over his head.It would help if Vance had any real track record here. He doesn't. The late Richard Holbrooke spent decades in the foreign service before he hammered out the Dayton Accords for Bill Clinton. Zalmay Khalilzad built a career across Republican and Democratic administrations before George W. Bush sent him to broker political settlements in Baghdad.And who led President Obama’s successful Iran nuclear agreement, the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action, or JCPOA? His secretary of state, John Kerry, who was a U.S. senator for 28 years and chaired the Senate Foreign Relations Committee before President Obama appointed him to his Cabinet.And Ambassador Wendy Sherman, who worked in the State Department and served as President Bill Clinton’s North Korea policy coordinator, handling early negotiations regarding their nuclear and ballistic missile programs.And J.D. Vance? He spent two years in the Senate, wrote a book about converting to hillbillies and Catholicism, and went on The View. Can’t think of much else.By the way, Vance's Catholicism tells him a lot about sin and redemption. It tells him very little about Qom.Many Republicans — and Fox News — seem aghast at the danger, grumbling now about a war powers vote nobody in the GOP had the spine to force when the strikes started.
Vice President JD Vance arrived in Switzerland on Sunday to join envoys Steve Witkoff and Jared Kushner for a critical new round of U.S.-Iran negotiations.
