Vice President JD Vance is not letting Tehran relax. Speaking at a conference in Hungary Wednesday, he called the two-week U.S.-Iran ceasefire fragile and warned that Trump will not hesitate to resume military action if Iran cheats.
“This is why I say this is a fragile truce,” Vance said. “You have people who clearly want to come to the negotiating table and work with us to find a good deal, and then you have people who are lying about even the fragile truce that we’ve already struck.”
“If the Iranians are willing in good faith to work with us, I think we can make an agreement,” he continued. “If they’re going to lie, if they’re going to cheat, if they’re going to try to prevent even the fragile truce that we’ve set up from taking place, that they’re not going to be happy.”
The remarks came a day after Trump pulled back from his 8 p.m. ET Tuesday deadline, agreeing to suspend strikes for two weeks at the request of Pakistan’s prime minister. The pause is conditional on Iran fully reopening the Strait of Hormuz, the chokepoint through which roughly one-fifth of the world’s oil moves.
Vance described Iran as divided between factions willing to deal and factions still lying about the truce itself. He said the administration has clear military, diplomatic, and economic cards to play, and that Trump has told the team to hold those tools back, for now. If Tehran doesn’t reciprocate, Vance said they will find out the president is not someone to mess with. He described Trump as impatient to make progress.
Iran’s national security council acknowledged the pause and said strait passage would require coordination with Iranian armed forces. Hegseth brushed that off. He said commerce would flow through the strait, period.
Trump posted on Truth Social Wednesday that the U.S. would be loading up supplies and staying present in the strait. He called it a big day for world peace. Talks are scheduled to resume in Islamabad on Friday. Washington is working from a 15-point framework; Tehran submitted a 10-point proposal.
