On Monday’s broadcast of the Fox News Channel’s “Special Report,” Vice President JD Vance responded to a question on if full reopening of the Strait of Hormuz without any tolls is a red line by stating that “the Iranians tried to move the goalposts during the negotiation. We made very clear that that’s unacceptable. We came to the negotiations saying, the United States, what we’ve given here is a ceasefire, we have stopped bombing the country. What we expect the Iranians to give up is a full reopening of the Straits of Hormuz.” And “our expectation is that the Iranians are going to continue to make progress to opening the Straits of Hormuz. And if they don’t, it’s going to fundamentally change the negotiation that we have with them.”
Vance said that if Iran wants to be a “normal country economically, it’s going to have to be a normal country from the perspective of not pursuing a nuclear weapon, and it’s going to have to be a normal country from not pursuing terrorism.”
Host Bret Baier then asked, “I hear you talking about the enriched uranium and the nuclear weapon and the inability for them to have one in the long term. I don’t hear you mentioning fully reopen the Strait of Hormuz toll-free. Is that one of the red lines?”
Vance answered, “Well, it’s one of the things we talked about, Bret, is that we need to see the Straits of Hormuz fully opened. And this is, frankly, one of the things where the Iranians tried to move the goalposts during the negotiation. We made very clear that that’s unacceptable. We came to the negotiations saying, the United States, what we’ve given here is a ceasefire, we have stopped bombing the country. What we expect the Iranians to give up is a full reopening of the Straits of Hormuz. We have seen, as the president has said, some significant uptick in traffic coming through the Straits of Hormuz. That’s good for the global economy. It’s good for the United States of America as well. But we haven’t seen that full reopening. So, our expectation is that the Iranians are going to continue to make progress to opening the Straits of Hormuz. And if they don’t, it’s going to fundamentally change the negotiation that we have with them.”
Later, Vance said that “we made very clear, look, these are the things that we’re willing to give, but these are the things that we must have. We must have the enriched material out of Iran, we must have their conclusive commitment to not develop a nuclear weapon.” And characterized the blocking of the Strait of Hormuz as “economic terrorism” by Iran.
Follow Ian Hanchett on Twitter @IanHanchett
Read the full article here