US Vice-President J.D. Vance said on Tuesday that diplomatic talks between Washington and Tehran had made “good progress”, but warned that the US military was “locked and loaded” to restart its campaign against Iran if negotiations collapsed.
“A lot of good progress is being made, but we’re just going to keep on working at it, and eventually we’ll either hit a deal or we won’t,” Vance said during a White House press briefing.
“We are not going to have a deal that allows the Iranians to have a nuclear weapon, so as the president just told me, we are locked and loaded,” he said, adding: “We don’t want to go down that pathway, but the president is willing and able to if we have to.”
With the fragile ceasefire between the two sides under strain, US President Donald Trump has repeatedly threatened to strike Iran, warning that the April truce could collapse if Tehran does not reach a deal, and he has continued to adjust the conditions for one.
Vance spoke hours after Trump told reporters he had given Tehran “two or three days” to reach an agreement. “I was an hour away from making the decision to go today,” Trump said on Tuesday.
On Monday, Trump said he had called off strikes on Iran planned for Tuesday at the urging of Gulf leaders, as “serious negotiations” for a deal to end the war were underway.
Vance, along with Trump’s son-in-law Jared Kushner and special envoy Steve Witkoff, took part last month in inconclusive talks with Iran in Islamabad, mediated by Pakistan.
On Tuesday, Vance also pushed back on media reports suggesting Washington might broker a deal under which Russia takes custody of Iran’s enriched uranium, an arrangement floated as a face-saving exit for Tehran.
“That has never been our plan,” Vance said. “The Iranians have not raised it.”
Asked about remarks by Egypt’s Foreign Minister Badr Abdelatty, who told CNN earlier in the day that Arab states were working with Washington on a memorandum of understanding with Iran, Vance declined to confirm any details.
“I haven’t seen this comment, so I won’t comment on it myself,” he said.
Trump has spoken in recent days with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Chinese President Xi Jinping about the Iran war.
Iran was one of the focal points of the Xi-Trump meeting in Beijing last week, where the two leaders, according to the White House, “agreed Iran cannot have a nuclear weapon”.
China, Iran’s largest oil customer, has urged restraint from all parties since the start of the conflict. -- SOUTH CHINA MORNING POST
