Vice President JD Vance said on Wednesday that Iran should take President Trump’s threats “seriously” as the US continues a major military buildup in the Middle East to prepare for what appears to be a coming attack on the Islamic Republic.
Vance has emerged as one of the leading figures in the Trump administration who is making the claim that the potential war is about the prospect of Iran acquiring a nuclear weapon, despite months of insistence from the president that the June 2025 US airstrikes “obliterated” the country’s nuclear facilities.
“You can’t let the craziest and worst regime in the world have nuclear weapons,” Vance told Fox News. “The president has several other tools at his disposal to ensure this doesn’t happen. 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.”
Later in the day, Vance made the claim that there’s evidence Iran is trying to “rebuild a nuclear weapon,” though Iran has never possessed nuclear weapons. The vice president likely meant to say “nuclear weapons program,” but there was no evidence Iran was pursuing a bomb before Israel launched the 12-Day War, and that was the opinion of US intelligence agencies at the time.
“The principle is very simple: Iran cannot have a nuclear weapon,” Vance told reporters. “If they try to rebuild a nuclear weapon, that causes problems for us. In fact, we’ve seen evidence that they have tried to do exactly that.”
While the administration insists the potential war is about Iran’s nuclear program, the likely US goal of any attack would be regime change or destroying Iran’s conventional missile program so it can’t threaten Israel. Either goal would require a massive attack and likely cannot be achieved by airpower alone.
