Vice President J.D. Vance flew into Switzerland Sunday to work through the details of the Islamabad Memorandum of Understanding, the 14-point ceasefire framework Trump and Iranian President Masoud Pezeshkian signed last week. Talks are ongoing. The agreement they’re trying to carry out is already getting torn apart by prominent Republicans back home.
Former Vice President Mike Pence called the deal a potential “lifeline” for the Iranian regime and said it “smacks of appeasement.” Former U.N. Ambassador Nikki Haley took issue with proposals she says could help rebuild Iran’s capabilities. Sen. Bill Cassidy of Louisiana was more blunt: he called it “the worst foreign policy blunder in decades.”
Vance rejected the characterizations.
“What the president has asked us to do is turn over a new leaf, to transform our relationship with the people of Iran and to extend an outstretched hand,” he told reporters Sunday. Vance said envoys Steve Witkoff and Jared Kushner had already made “great progress” before he touched down, and he expected more to come. He’s also said publicly that “the United States wins either way.”
Iran sent a high-level team to Geneva: Parliament Speaker Mohammad Ghalibaf and Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi are leading Tehran’s side. The MOU itself was brokered by Pakistan; both governments signed it last week.
The Republican pushback isn’t limited to Pence and Cassidy. Sen. Roger Wicker of Mississippi, the Armed Services Committee chairman, has warned the deal looks “out of step” with the goals of the military campaign. Sen. Ted Cruz questioned the scope of concessions offered to Tehran.
Sen. Lindsey Graham said Sunday he thinks it falls apart. “If you don’t have a diplomatic path through the MOU, then you have to go to war, or some other form of coercion,” Graham told CBS’s “Face the Nation.”
Supporters of the deal argue critics are missing the bigger picture. U.S. and allied strikes hit Iranian military and nuclear sites, took out senior commanders, and significantly degraded Tehran’s military capacity, all without a large-scale ground deployment. From that starting point, the administration’s position is that the MOU locks in those gains rather than giving them up.
Switzerland has served as a go-between for Washington and Tehran since 1980, when the U.S. cut off diplomatic relations after Iran seized the American Embassy. Swiss VP Ignazcio Cassis called the ongoing talks “a significant contribution to putting the agreement into effect.”
Trump, separately, warned Iran on Sunday to rein in Hezbollah in Lebanon, threatening resumed airstrikes if it doesn’t.
