Vice President JD Vance is pushing back on comparisons between the emerging Trump-Vance Iran pact and claims that the agreement, released Wednesday, bears too much resemblance to President Barack Obama’s nuclear deal.
Critics pointed to Vance’s defense of the memorandum of understanding to reopen the Strait of Hormuz — the details of which were released by the administration — under which Iran would receive economic benefits only after complying with nuclear restrictions. They argue that dynamic mirrors how Obama promoted the 2015 Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action, or JCPOA, which Trump and Vance have long reviled.
Vance, however, suggested to Fox News that the comparison stems from a misconception because the proverbial carrot-and-stick positions from the Obama deal have been reversed.
“You’ve got Iranian propagandists out there saying, well, ‘we get all these things’, and they leave out the fact that they only get those things if they fundamentally transform themselves as a country,” he said, adding that the deal could open the door to economic cooperation for Tehran throughout the Mideast if it complies.
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“So the United States wins either way. As the president said, either they get nothing, we destroy their nuclear program and the Strait of Hormuz [is] open, or they fundamentally transformed themselves. And that’s a big one too. It’s really up to them,” he said on “The Five.”
Host Jesse Watters agreed that the deal is the “exact opposite” of what Obama and former Sen. John Kerry, D-Mass., forged a decade ago.
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“If they fund the proxies they don’t get the economic benefits, and the missiles are covered because 85% of them have been destroyed and 90% of their industrial base has been destroyed.”
“They’ve been disarmed. They can’t re-arm because they can manufacture more weapons and now they can really project power outside of their borders because they have no Air Force and they have no Navy and they don’t pose an imminent threat to the United States anymore,” Watters said, further arguing that the Iranians cannot enrich uranium because the only force capable of recovering the uranium “dust” is the U.S.
In a July 2015 statement defending the JCPOA, Obama used language similar to that now being used by Trump administration officials.
“[W]e give nothing up by testing whether or not this problem can be solved peacefully. If, in a worst-case scenario, Iran violates the deal, the same options that are available to me today will be available to any U.S. president in the future. And I have no doubt that 10 or 15 years from now, the person who holds this office will be in a far stronger position,” a White House statement read.
Obama also argued a future president would be “in a far stronger position” if Iran violated the agreement years later because inspections and transparency measures would allow the U.S. to monitor Tehran’s nuclear stockpiles.
Vance, however, noted there are few such stockpiles left after the Trump administration ordered strikes months ago.
Like the current administration, Obama sought to blunt criticism, warning in an August 2015 speech that ads will run and “accompanying commentary” will try to undermine the deal.
“Iran has powerful incentives to keep its commitments,” he said in a line similar to arguments Vance has made in Fox News interviews.
“Before getting sanctions relief, Iran has to take significant, concrete steps like removing centrifuges and getting rid of its stockpiles. If Iran violates the agreement over the next decade, all of the sanctions can snap back into place,” Obama said.
“On the other hand, if Iran abides by the deal and its economy begins to reintegrate with the world, the incentive to avoid snapback will only grow,” Obama said in another line that echoed arguments now being made by administration officials.
Some critics, however, remained skeptical as of Wednesday, noting that Trump spent years attacking the JCPOA, arguing it provided economic relief in exchange for insufficient concessions.
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Sen. Mark Kelly, D-Ariz., a Trump critic and former astronaut, suggested the deal resembled something candidate Trump would have lambasted.
“I did read what was reported on those 14 points [of the agreement] and I got to say, I mean, if this was something that President Obama or Biden had put forward, I don’t think Donald Trump would have been too supportive of it, right?” Kelly said.
“I mean, it gives everything: It’s basically everything that the Iranians would want,” he warned.
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Iranian security expert Behnam Ben Taleblu told Fox News Digital in an exclusive interview Wednesday that some, however, will take pause at the Trump-Vance deal
“The administration is focusing very much on this not being American money, whether one is looking at the reconstruction or the ability of the regime to later on generate revenue through oil sales. But worryingly, any deal with the Islamic Republic is a deal with the devil,” said Taleblu, who leads the Iran program at the Foundation for the Defense of Democracies — a nonpartisan national security and foreign policy research institute in Washington.
“When Trump left the Iran deal in 2018, he didn’t leave it because of violation, he left it because that which the U.S. got was not worth that which the U.S. gave — meaning the nuclear concessions the U.S. got was not worth the sanctions relief the U.S. gave,” Taleblu said.
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The best way for the administration to secure a narrative “win,” according to Taleblu, would be to fully release the text of the deal to present a true comparison with both the JCPOA and the less-remembered 2013 JPA, which was also forged by Obama.
Taleblu said the JPA is a better comparison to reports about the Trump deal. That pact was smaller in scope and set the stage for Obama and Kerry to negotiate the larger 2015 deal. In the current deal, Taleblu said, there is a similar 60-day window for Iran to comply.
“They have to show that that which they got is worth more than that which they gave. And based on leaks of the [pending deal] in Bloomberg and CNN and Al-Arabiya, it’s not looking good,” he said.
Another headwind facing the administration is the American public’s limited tolerance for economic repercussions, such as rising gas and commodity prices or occasional downturns in the Nasdaq.
“This is not just political it’s cultural and social which means the administration has to do a better job bringing the public along,” he said.
Taleblu said Iran has been warring with the U.S. since 1979 and that there needs to be more effective “political communications” about that fact to secure public buy-in.
He also warned that while the effects of a war with Iran on the U.S. may strain the public, they would be dwarfed by the economic fallout from a future conflict with a more complicated adversary: China.
The memorandum of understanding lays out immediate waivers for Iranian oil exports, as well as a framework for $300 billion in economic development.
An official, however, emphasized to Fox News Digital that oil waivers were the only major benefit Tehran would realize before any final agreement is reached after a 60-day window.
In a reporter call, officials underlined that negotiations would promptly end if it was discovered Iran was “just dragging us along and kind of bull——- us,” and that they remained skeptical of Iran’s intentions.
Fox News Digital reached out to the vice president’s office for additional comment.
Fox News Digital’s Morgan Phillips contributed to this report.