Trump is ensuring Iran will never build a nuclear weapon, says JD Vance - The Times

JD Vance boiled down the US objective in Iran to ending its nuclear ambitions permanently in the latest attempt by the Trump administration to spell out its war aims.

The US vice-president, a longstanding critic of previous American wars, said that the fate of the Islamic Republic regime was “incidental” to the US bombing campaign.

Vance’s explanation came hours after President Trump set out four goals — to destroy Iran’s military capabilities, “annihilate” its navy, prevent it acquiring a nuclear weapon and ensure it does not enable terror groups. He also backed away from talk of regime change after urging Iranians at the weekend to “seize control”.

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Vance insisted there was no contradiction between Trump’s claims to have “obliterated” Iran’s nuclear programme last summer and attacking now to end its nuclear ambitions.

“We set them back substantially but I think the president was looking for the long haul,” Vance told Fox News on Monday evening.

“He was looking for Iran to make a significant long-term commitment that they would never build a nuclear weapon, that they would not pursue the ability to be on the brink of a nuclear weapon,” he said.

“The president … didn’t just want to keep the country safe from an Iranian nuclear weapon for the first three, four years of his second term. He wanted to make sure that Iran could never have a nuclear weapon.”

• How close is Iran to building a nuclear weapon?

Asked about criticism that the Iran campaign seems reminiscent of previous American attacks on Iraq and Afghanistan that lasted many years, Vance said both of those suffered from “mission creep” and had no clear objective.

“What’s so different about this is that the president has clearly defined what he wants to accomplish,” he said. “There’s just no way, I said this before the conflict started, I’ll repeat it again, there’s just no way that Donald Trump is going to allow this country to get into a multi-year conflict with no clear end in sight and no clear objective.”

As for the Iranian regime, Vance said that “whatever happens with the regime in one form or another, it’s incidental to the president’s primary objective here, which is to make sure the Iranian terrorist regime does not build a nuclear bomb”.

“So there are a lot of things that could happen with the regime,” he said. “Obviously, the president and I would prefer that you have a friendly regime in Iran, a stable country, a country that’s willing to work with the United States … but fundamentally, so long as we achieve the president’s objective to make it clear that Iran can’t build the bomb, I think the president will be happy with the outcome.”

Vance was not asked about the secretary of state Marco Rubio’s revelation earlier that the “imminent threat” which triggered Trump to launch the attack on Iran was the realisation that Israel was preparing to strike first. “There absolutely was an imminent threat,” Rubio said on Capitol Hill after meeting senior members of Congress.

“The imminent threat was that we knew that if Iran was attacked, and we believed they would be attacked, that they would immediately come after us. And we were not going to sit there and absorb a blow before we responded,” he added.

Rubio said “if we waited for them to hit us first after they were attacked, and by someone else, [if] Israel attacked them … we would suffer more casualties and more deaths. We went proactively in a defensive way to prevent them from inflicting higher damage.”

• How long can the US afford to wage war on Iran?

Rubio spoke as members of Congress prepared to vote this week on war powers resolutions that would block Trump from continuing with the attacks on Iran, without a congressional declaration of war or a formal authorisation for the use of military force.

The US constitution grants Congress, not the president, the power to send troops to war, except for limited action for national security reasons.

However, the Republicans hold slim margins in both the House and Senate. Even though a few Republicans have joined Democrats in supporting previous war powers resolutions over Venezuela, Trump’s party has narrowly blocked them. Ultimately, even if they were to pass, they would require an extremely unlikely two-thirds majority to overcome a presidential veto.

Presidents of both parties have established a history of carrying out military operations without approval from Congress, including George HW Bush’s invasion of Panama and Barack Obama’s regime change campaign in Libya.

John Fetterman, a senator from Pennsylvania, is one of the few Democrats who has said he would vote against the resolution to curtail Trump. “It’s not necessary. Honestly, though, the entire thing, it’s really an empty gesture,” Fetterman told Fox News.