JD Vance tells Israel ‘you can’t kill your way out’ of security problems
United States President JD Vance has been defending the memorandum of understanding to end the US-Israeli war with Iran, responding to criticism of the deal
United States President JD Vance has been defending the memorandum of understanding to end the US-Israeli war with Iran, responding to criticism of the deal from members of the opposing Democratic Party and Republicans alike. But speaking during an interview with The New York Times published on Thursday, the day after US President Donald Trump and Iranian President Pezeshkian inked the MoU, Vance reserved some of his harshest criticism for Israel, whose leaders have continually pushed Washington to continue the war. Vance pointed to criticism of the deal from Israeli officials, including far-right ministers Bezalel Smotrich and Itamar Ben-Gvir. “And I guess my response to them would be: What is your exact proposal? You’re a country of nine million people. You can’t just kill your way out of solving every single national security problem that you have,” he said. He called on Israel to let negotiations play out, and to “give a little bit of credit to the United States of America, which I think has been an incredible partner for the Israeli government for a long time”. His statement was the latest instance of the Trump administration taking an atypically harsh approach – at least rhetorically – towards Israel, whose ongoing occupation of and military operations in southern Lebanon have repeatedly threatened to derail a more lasting agreement to end the war with Iran.
In recent days, Trump has criticised Israel’s rules of engagement, which war monitors have long said lead to high civilian casualties, while calling for restraint in its war with Hezbollah. “Too many people have been killed,” Trump said from the G7 Summit in France. “You don’t have to knock down an apartment house every time you’re looking for somebody, because there are a lot of people in those apartment houses, and they’re not all Hezbollah,” he said. Vance claims victory Speaking at a subsequent news conference on Thursday, Vance continued the administration’s defence of the MoU with Iran, which opens the Strait of Hormuz, lifts the US naval blockade of Iranian ports and pledges to end fighting on all fronts, including in Lebanon. Several top Democrats – and a handful of Republicans – have said the initial agreement appears to favour Tehran, saying the war has yielded no meaningful concessions that could not have been achieved in previous rounds of diplomacy. Vance maintained that, while several issues remain unresolved, the Trump administration’s war had created more favourable circumstances for the US. That included degrading Iran’s nuclear capacity, setting back Iran’s conventional military and weakening Iran’s economy, he said.
The BriefWire