NO JOKE

Vance Admits Iran Talks Are a String of Clown Show Errors

The vice president tried, and failed, to suggest that efforts to end the war are going well.

JD Vance has given a candid assessment of how peace talks with Iran are going by listing a string of examples of where they have gone wrong.

Speaking in Switzerland on the second day of U.S.-Iran talks, the vice president did not exude confidence about a proposed deal to end Donald Trump’s deeply unpopular Middle East conflict within an apparent 60-day timeframe.

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During a press conference at the luxury Bürgenstock Resort overlooking Lake Lucerne, Vance was forced to insist that Trump’s threats over the weekend—in which the 80-year-old president suggested he would “blow the s--t out” of Iran if it closed the Strait of Hormuz and would “hit Iran very hard again, just like we did last week, only harder”—did not “throw a wrench” into the peace talks.

Vance also admitted that his team’s calls to nuclear inspectors had gone unanswered, and that members of the Iranian delegation threatened to leave the talks early before ultimately departing Switzerland for Tehran on Monday morning.

“The thing with the Iranians, yes, they did threaten to walk out, or at least there were social media threats that they would walk out,” Vance said.

“But we were negotiating well past one in the morning, so they didn’t walk out, and their technical team is still here in Bürgenstock working with our technical team as we speak.”

Vance, 41, also suggested that if Iranians engage in “what us millennials might call ‘trash talk,’” they cannot expect the erratic 80-year-old president to remain silent.

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“When they make threats that aren’t rooted in reality, they have to accept that the president of the United States is actually going to set the record straight. That’s all that happens,” Vance added.

“So yes, there was a little bit of threatening, there was a little bit of whining, but at the end of the day, the talks continued, and we made great progress.”

The vice president then made the stark admission that the U.S. delegation—which includes Trump’s go-to envoy Steve Witkoff and the president’s son-in-law, Jared Kushner—made an unsuccessful attempt to contact nuclear inspectors during the crunch talks.

“It’s funny, we were trying to call some of the inspectors last night around 2:00 in the morning,” Vance said. “As you can expect, not many people are answering their phone at 2:00 in the morning.”

Vance also revealed that the inspectors had not returned the call by the time he gave his press conference just after 1 p.m. local time.

Elsewhere, Vance also defended one of the many terrible deals outlined in Trump’s memorandum of understanding to end the Iran deal, which even Republicans have trashed.

Speaking to reporters in Switzerland, Vance suggested that the plan to make “frozen or restricted funds and assets” available to Tehran in return for next-to-zero concessions from the U.S. was a “classic” Trump deal.

“If Iranian assets are ever unfrozen, they’re going to make American farmers richer and feed the Iranian people,” Vance said. “That’s a very, very good and very classic Trump deal that’s great for our people, great for the people of Iran.”

The Daily Beast has contacted the White House for comment.

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Ewan PalmerReporter

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