Vice President JD Vance indicated that the Trump administration doesn’t want to place U.S. troops on the ground in Iran, following airstrikes targeting the country’s nuclear program on Saturday night.
“Mr. Vice President, can you rule out that getting involved in this conflict won’t eventually lead to U.S. boots on the ground,” NBC News reporter Kristen Welker asked Vance in an interview Sunday.
Vance replied that President Donald Trump has been “very clear” that the United States has “no interest in a protracted conflict” with Iran.
“We have no interest in boots on the ground,” he said.
Vance said that while he would not discuss “sensitive intelligence about what we’ve seen on the ground,” he felt “very confident that we’ve substantially delayed their development of a nuclear weapon.”
“I think that we have really pushed their program back by a very long time,“ he said. ”I think that it’s going to be many many years before the Iranians are able to develop a nuclear weapon.”
The vice president said the administration had “negotiated aggressively’ with Iran to try to find a peaceful settlement and that Trump made his decision after assessing that the Islamic regime was not acting “in good faith.”
“I actually think it provides an opportunity to reset this relationship, reset these negotiations, and get us in a place where Iran can decide not to be a threat to its neighbors, not a threat to the United States, and if they’re willing to do that, the United States is all ears,” Vance said.
In an announcement Saturday evening, Trump confirmed that the United States bombed three Iranian nuclear sites, which U.S. officials have long believed to be facilities used to enrich uranium to make nuclear weapons, including the country’s main Fordow site that’s partially buried under a mountain.
“We have completed our very successful attack on the three Nuclear sites in Iran, including Fordow, Natanz, and Esfahan,” Trump wrote in a statement on Truth Social.
Trump added that the planes quickly departed Iranian airspace, and suggested that only the United States could have conducted such a mission. He then suggested that it’s now time to engage in peace talks, in the midst of a weeklong aerial conflict between Israel and Iran.
The comments from Vance to NBC News echo remarks by Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, who said that the United States “does not seek war” with Iran.
“This mission was not and has not been about regime change,” Hegseth said.
Iranian officials on Sunday suggested that the regime could retaliate to the U.S. airstrike.
Iran’s foreign minister, Abbas Araghchi, wrote in a post on X that “in accordance with the UN Charter and its provisions allowing a legitimate response in self-defense, Iran reserves all options to defend its sovereignty, interest, and people” following the bombing of the nuclear facilities. He did not provide more details.
After the U.S. military killed a top Iranian commander, Qassem Soleimani, in early 2020, Iran responded by firing barrages of missiles at U.S. military bases in the middle east, causing minor injuries to troops stationed there.
The Associated Press contributed to this report.
