U.S. Vice President JD Vance took aim at Israel’s military strategy Thursday, telling the country it cannot simply eliminate its way through every national security challenge it faces — and he stood firmly behind President Donald Trump’s stance that Iran should be allowed to hold onto some of its ballistic missiles.
The comments came as Vance pushed back against Israeli opposition to a memorandum of understanding, or MoU, that President Trump signed digitally on Wednesday night while in Versailles. The agreement was reached between Washington and Tehran.
In an interview with The New York Times, Vance described Israel’s reaction to the deal as a “freakout” driven by distrust of the United States.
“I find this whole freakout in Israel a little bit odd because I think that it comes from a place of mistrust, and I think that America has earned the trust of that region of the world,” Vance said.
He went on to say: “We’ve done a very good job by that particular country, and that particular government, and I think that the idea that we’ve made a terrible deal is not supported by the facts, but just doesn’t make any sense if you consider the broad length of the relationship.”
Vance made clear the U.S. plans to move forward with the agreement regardless of Israeli objections, even as Israel has fought alongside the United States in the ongoing conflict. He labeled Israeli anxiety over concessions to Iran — including potential sanctions relief — as a “weird panic,” insisting any benefits extended to Tehran would be tied to Iran’s “behavior.”
“There is this weird panic almost in the Israeli system that I’ve picked up on where they assume that everything that is contemplated that is good for Iran will happen — but that will happen without the Iranians changing any behavior. And I just don’t know why anybody would think that’s true,” Vance said.
Vance noted that while Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has refrained from directly attacking the MoU, other Israeli officials — including National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir — have sharply condemned the deal.
“It’s clear that large segments of the Israeli political system and population are very sensitive about this deal,” Vance said. “But I also think they’re picking up on some misinformation about the deal and running with it and sort of panicking about it.”
Directly addressing Israeli critics, Vance challenged them to offer an alternative plan. “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.” — though it should be noted that Vance misstated Israel’s population; the actual figure is approximately 10 million.
At a separate press conference, Vance also backed up President Trump’s Wednesday comment that Iran has the right to keep a portion of its ballistic missile arsenal. He appeared to draw a parallel between Iran’s self-defense rights and those of Israel.
“All the president said yesterday is that, of course, regional countries don’t give up the right of self-defense,” Vance explained. “Israel doesn’t give up the right of self-defense if Hezbollah fires rockets or drones at Israel. You can’t tell the country, whether Israel or Iran, they’re not allowed to have any self-defense.”
Vance acknowledged that Israel had already significantly degraded Iran’s ballistic missile capabilities, and argued the MoU would block Iran from developing “the kind of missiles that can broadly threaten the entire world.”
“As part of the final deal, what we want to see is Iran not funding regional instability, funding regional terrorism, and of course, [not] trying to rebuild their nuclear weapons program,” he added.
