On Monday’s broadcast of the Fox News Channel’s “Jesse Watters Primetime,” Vice President JD Vance said that “we did destroy the nuclear enrichment facilities during Operation Midnight Hammer over the summer. … We destroyed Iran’s ability to build a weapon during President Trump’s term. We set them back substantially. But I think the President was looking for the long haul. He was looking for Iran to make a significant, long-term commitment that they would never build a nuclear weapon, that they would not pursue the ability to be on the brink of a nuclear weapon.” And that’s the objective of Operation Epic Fury and whatever happens with Iran’s regime is “incidental” to keeping them from going nuclear.
Host Jesse Watters asked, “Mr. Vice President, why this operation and why now?”
Vance answered, “So, to step back just a little bit, if you go back to Midnight Hammer in the summer, what the President wanted to do with that mission was eliminate Iran’s ability to build a nuclear weapon. And we did destroy the nuclear enrichment facilities during Operation Midnight Hammer over the summer. Now, here’s the thing, Jesse: We destroyed Iran’s ability to build a weapon during President Trump’s term. We set them back substantially. But I think the President was looking for the long haul. He was looking for Iran to make a significant, long-term commitment that they would never build a nuclear weapon, that they would not pursue the ability to be on the brink of a nuclear weapon. And, after months, really, almost a year, of painstaking diplomacy, what the President determined is he didn’t want to just keep the president — or, excuse me, keep the country safe from an Iranian nuclear weapon for the first three, four years of his second term, he wanted to make sure that Iran could never have a nuclear weapon, and that would require, fundamentally, a change in mindset from the Iranian regime. So, he saw that the Iranian regime was weakened, he knew that they were committed to getting on that brink of a nuclear weapon, and he decided to take action because he felt that was necessary in order to protect the nation’s security.”
Later, Vance added that “whatever happens with the regime, in one form or another, it’s incidental to the President’s primary objective here, which is to make sure the Iranian terrorist regime does not build a nuclear bomb.”
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