In an interview with FOX News Channel’s “Special Report” host Bret Baier on Monday, Vice President J.D. Vance said he expects Iran to reopen the Strait of Hormuz as part of ceasefire negotiations, warning failure to do so would “fundamentally change” talks. Vance said Trump wants to get nuclear material out of the country so the next administration does not need to be concerned about Iran. “That material is actually buried underground by Operation Midnight Hammer,” Vance said. “If you think about this over the long haul, the president doesn’t want to leave the next president or the president after that to be worrying about this program. And so we would like to get that material out of the country completely so that the United States has control of it.”

BRET BAIER, HOST: I hear you talking about the enriched uranium and the nuclear weapon and the inability for them to have one in the long term. I don’t hear you mentioning fully reopen the Strait of Hormuz toll-free. Is that one of the red lines? VICE PRESIDENT J.D. VANCE: Well, it’s one of the things we talked about, Bret, is that we need to see the Straits of Hormuz fully open and this is frankly one of the things where the Iranians tried to move the goalposts during the negotiation. We made very clear that that’s unacceptable. We came to the negotiation saying the United States, what we’ve given here is a ceasefire. We’ve stopped bombing the country. What we expect the Iranians to give up is a full reopening of the Straits of Hormuz. We have seen, as the president has said, some significant uptick in traffic coming through the Straits of Hormuz. That’s good for the global economy. It’s good for for the United States of America as well, but we haven’t seen that full reopening. So our expectation is that the Iranians are going to continue to make progress to opening the Straits of Hormuz and if they don’t, it’s going to fundamentally change the negotiation that we have with them. BAIER: Not surprised. I mean the Iranians often talk about negotiations and in a different way. The Iranian foreign minister posted in intensive talks, at highest level in 47 years, Iran engaged with the U.S. in good faith to end war, but when just inches away from Islamabad, MOU, we encountered maximalism, shifting goalposts and blockades. Zero lessons earned. Goodwill begets goodwill. Enmity begets enmity. That does not sound like they’re heading back to the table anytime soon. Does this ceasefire continue and then the war starts again? VANCE: Well, first of all, Bret, I have to give a lot of credit to Field Marshal Asim Munir, and the Prime Minister of Pakistan, both who are incredible hosts and I think incredible statesmen and helping, you know, mediate the conversation between us and the Iranians. Again, two countries that have not really had serious discussions in a very long time. But to your point about Foreign Minister Araghchi’s statement, if you see what Foreign Minister Araghchi said, yes, there’s a little bit of bluster, but if you read between the lines, he himself is saying that we were just inches away from an agreement. And I think that what that suggests is the Iranians, one, they’re very interested in making a deal. Two, they did move pretty close to our position over the stage of the negotiations. But one thing I’ll say, Bret, is Iranians are very different negotiators. At least those Iranians were very different negotiators than we are in the United States. What I did and what Jared Kushner and Steve Witkoff did is that we made very clear, look, these are the things that we’re willing to give, but these are the things that we must have. We must have the enriched material out of Iran. We must have their conclusive commitment to not develop a nuclear weapon. And I think that if the Iranians are willing to meet us there, then this can be a very, very good deal for both countries. If they’re not willing to meet us there, that’s up to them. That’s their decision. And really the ball is very much in their court. So you ask what happens next? I think the Iranians are going to determine what happens next. As the President of the United States says, we have the cards, we have the military advantage. We now have additional economic pressure that we’re applying on them through the blockade that we’ve imposed on their oil coming out of the Straits of Hormuz. So we have a lot of cards, we have the leverage, and we’re gonna see what the Iranians do with that.

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