VP Vance Warns Israel: Criticize Trump's Iran Deal, Lose US Aid

Vice President JD Vance delivered a stunning message to Israeli officials who have criticized the Trump administration’s controversial peace deal with Iran: Shut up or risk losing American military aid.

Vance was wrapping up a briefing with members of the White House press corps Thursday when he was asked about an Axios report indicating that Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu has been “fuming” over the agreement after other news outlets reported on criticisms of the 14-paragraph memorandum of understanding between Washington and Tehran offered by far-right Israeli cabinet members Bezalel Smotrich and Itamar Ben-Gvir as well as other Israeli officials.

After first suggesting that Netanyahu had offered a more positive opinion of the deal in private conversations, he told reporters he is personally “bothered” by “people within the Israeli cabinet who have come out and attacked the deal, and in some ways very personally attacked the President of the United States.”

Vance then claimed that President Donald Trump “is the only head of state in the entire world who is sympathetic to the nation of Israel at this moment in time” and warned that were he in Israel’s government, he “might not be attacking the only powerful ally that I have anywhere left in the entire world” before implying that American weapons exports to Israel could be imperiled if Israeli cabinet ministers continue to criticize the president.

“The other thing that I would say is that over the last three months, two-thirds of the defensive weapons that have protected your homeland have been built by American hands and paid for by American tax dollars,” he said.

“The problem for Israel is not Donald J. Trump, and anybody in Israel who thinks their biggest problem is the President of the United States needs to wake up and smell the reality of the situation that country is in.”

Vance’s implicit threat to cut of defense aid to the longtime U.S. ally comes less than a day after Trump told the Group of Seven summit that “there would be no Israel” without him and criticized Netanyahu’s judgment in vulgar terms while calling the longtime Israel head of government “crazy” over his continued attacks on civilian areas in Lebanon.

“Too many people have been killed,” Trump said.

“You don’t have to knock down an apartment house every time you’re looking for somebody, because there are a lot ​of people in those apartment houses, and they’re not all Hezbollah.”

The vice president’s stunning warning to Israel came at the tail end of a contentious briefing meant to quell criticism over the deal the administration has struck with the Islamic Republic to reopen the Strait of Hormuz in exchange for significant sanctions relief for Tehran plus as much as $300 billion in American and other international investments that the agreement states will be for “the reconstruction and economic development” of Iran.

The deal will also see the Trump administration end “all unilateral US sanctions, primary and secondary” against Tehran in exchange for an Iranian pledge to “not procure or develop nuclear weapons” — a position the Islamic Republic has held since the 2015 nuclear agreement that Trump pulled the U.S. out of during his first term.

Vance repeatedly stressed that much of the sanctions relief and development aid would come after a finalized agreement is reached during negotiations that are set to take place over the next two months. But he struggled to explain how the agreement is superior to the comprehensive deal that had been negotiated between the U.S., Iran and the other four nuclear weapons states in painstaking talks during the Obama administration.

Asked to explain the difference between the detailed Obama-era agreement and the tentative deal laid out in the 14-point memorandum, Vance explained that a major difference is the Trump administration's deal has support from many of the Gulf Arab states that were not in favor of the old nuclear deal.

“Back then they hated that deal. They felt like it empowered the Iranians to be bad actors across the region,” he said.

“What are they saying about the president's peace deal? They're saying this is an amazingly transformative thing for the region, because either way we and the broader region win. Iran is weakened, their nuclear program destroyed, their economy in desperate straits, and if they change their behavior, big things are going to happen for Iran and for the world.”