Vance: Iran Will Destroy Nuclear Dust, Will Get ‘Benefits’ if They End Enrichment, Allow Strong Inspections

On Monday’s broadcast of the Fox News Channel’s “Hannity,” Vice President JD Vance said that under the agreement with Iran, the highly-enriched material will be destroyed “and if they don’t get to a point where they agree to stop enriching, then they don’t get the other benefits of the bargain.” And “if they show verifiable commitment, and that means a real inspections regime, then they can get the benefits of the bargain.”

Vance said, “So, what we’re going to do, Sean, is destroy the highly-enriched material, the nuclear dust as we call it. And we’re going to do it with the Iranians. That’s what the president has said, he wants us to work with the Iranians, with the international organizations, to destroy that stockpile of enriched material, because that does set them back a little bit further. We’ve already fundamentally destroyed their program, but that does set them back a little bit further, and that’s important, of course, to the United States of America.”

Host Sean Hannity then cut in to ask, “And they’re agreeing never to enrich?”

Vance answered, “They’re agreeing right now to eliminate the enriched stockpile, and if they don’t get to a point where they agree to stop enriching, then they don’t get the other benefits of the bargain. That’s the way this is set up is, a lot of the technical details we’re going to figure out over the next month, over the next two months, but the basic structure is, they can get a lot, if they comply with the United States’ demands, they don’t get anything if they don’t comply with anything.”

Later, [relevant exchange begins around 12:25], Hannity asked, “Let’s talk about any place, anywhere, any time U.S. inspectors, that’s a part of the deal?”

Vance answered, “Yeah, that’s absolutely something that we are negotiating over, Sean. That’s one of the final details that’s going to be figured out here. If you go back to the original Obama JCPOA, there are a couple of big problems with it: Number one, by the way, is that the Gulf Arabs hated the Obama deal. Why? Because they thought that it empowered the Iranians to be a malign actor, it actually enriched the Iranians while they were misbehaving. This deal, the Gulf Arabs love, because they know that this is the kind of deal that could fundamentally transform the Middle East. Another problem with that deal is that the inspections regime was effectively nonexistent. There was a little bit there, but it was basically nonexistent. This goes back to our fundamental principle here, that if they show verifiable commitment, and that means a real inspections regime, then they can get the benefits of the bargain.”