“Yesterday was a very, very good day. We made great progress. We did exactly what we wanted,” said the vice president of the U.S. Jay D. Vance regarding the negotiations of Switzerland with Iranian officials.
“The final agreement is the house. We laid the foundation. We haven’t built it yet, but we’ve successfully laid the foundation,” he noted.
“This is not an agreement that the U.S. is imposing on the region. This is a agreement that the region has desperately asked the U.S. to implement,” he said.
“We wanted to create a mechanism to keep the Strait of Hormuz open. It is open,” insisted Vance.
““We wanted to ensure that we would create a mechanism that would guarantee that when conflicts inevitably arise, we would be able to resolve them.”
“As Trump said, sometimes these ceasefires just mean there are a few fewer shots fired. We, however, wanted to ensure that we have established the proper coordination so that if there are exchanges of fire —whether Hezbollah strikes Israel or Israel responds— we are in genuine communication with one another and can find a way to halt the firing.”
“The Iranians have agreed to invite inspectors from the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) back into their country”. Talks regarding the inspections are likely to begin as early as this week.
“I can’t stay here (in Switzerland) for the next 60 days. I want to return to the U.S. The technical teams will continue working.”
“The Iranians threatened to walk away, or at least there were threats on social media that they would walk away. They didn’t walk away.”
“We told the Iranians yesterday: ‘When you engage in what we millennials would call… trash talk (threats/provocative statements), you can’t expect Trump not to respond.” When they say things that aren’t true, Trump is going to respond to them.”.
On the major issue of Lebanon , the vice president stated that it is an ongoing discussion, a “work in progress”.
“Sometimes a low-ranking member (of Hezbollah) launches a drone without the approval of the top leadership. Of course, Israel must respond to this, but we could have a more peaceful situation if Israel responded within the framework of the ongoing discussion between Hezbollah, Lebanon, Israel, and other partners in the region,” he emphasized. Israel and every other nation in the region has the right to self-defense, Jay D. Vance clarified, however.
As he argued, “the Israelis have made it very clear that they have no territorial ambitions in southern Lebanon. The reason they feel they need to be there is because they are concerned about Hezbollah fighters. “We believe we can reach a point where both Lebanon’s territorial integrity and Israel’s security will be protected.”
According to the U.S. vice president, “what Jared (Kushner) achieved, the Qataris, and the entire team is, in my view, a classic Trump deal. If Iranian assets are ever unfrozen, they will make American farmers richer and help feed the Iranian people.”
