The vice president delivered this update on Saturday/Sunday after more than 20 hours of negotiations with the Iranians — around 6:45 a.m. on Sunday local time in Islamabad. “We have not reached an agreement – and I think that’s bad news for Iran much more than it’s bad news for the United States.,” the vice president said. “We just could not get to a situation where the Iranians were willing to accept our terms.” “As the President of the United States said, if the Iranians are willing to negotiate in good faith, we’re certainly willing to extend the open hand. If they’re going to try to play us, then they’re going to find the negotiating team is not that receptive,” the White House told reporters earlier in the day. Vance is the highest-level U.S. official to speak directly to the Iranians since the 1979 revolution. President Trump and Secretary of State/National Security Advisor Marco Rubi are currently attending a UFC fight in Miami. “We leave here with a very simple proposal… our final and best offer. We’ll see if the Iranians accept it,” Vance said. “We were quite flexible, we were quite accommodating… and unfortunately we weren’t able to make any headway.”

VICE PRESIDENT J.D. VANCE We’ve been at it now for 21 hours, and we’ve had a number of substantive discussions with the Iranians. That’s the good news. The bad news is that we have not reached an agreement, and I think that’s bad news for Iran much more than it’s bad news for the United States of America. So we go back to the United States having not come to an agreement. We’ve made very clear what our red lines are, what things we’re willing to accommodate them on, and what things we’re not willing to accommodate them on. And we’ve made that as clear as we possibly could, and they have chosen not to accept our terms. Questions? NICK ROBERTSON, CNN Precisely what have they rejected here? Can you help us understand it a little bit? J.D. VANCE Well, I won’t go into all the details because I don’t want to negotiate in public after we negotiated for 21 hours in private. But the simple fact is that we need to see an affirmative commitment that they will not seek a nuclear weapon and they will not seek the tools that would enable them to quickly achieve a nuclear weapon. That is the core goal of the President of the United States, and that’s what we’ve tried to achieve through these negotiations. Again, their nuclear program-such as it is-the enrichment facilities that they had before have been destroyed. But the simple question is: do we see a fundamental commitment of will for the Iranians not to develop a nuclear weapon-not just now, not just two years from now, but for the long term? We haven’t seen that yet. We hope that we will. JEN [REPORTER – LAST NAME UNCERTAIN] Was there a framework on anything? And also, did the Iranian frozen assets come up, and did you reach any conclusions on those? J.D. VANCE We talked about all those issues, Jen, and we talked about a number of issues beyond that. And so certainly those things came up. But again, we just could not get to a situation where the Iranians were willing to accept our terms. I think that we were quite flexible. We were quite accommodating. The president told us: you need to come here in good faith and make your best effort to get a deal. We did that, and unfortunately, we weren’t able to make any headway. PRESTON [REPORTER – LAST NAME UNCERTAIN] Mr. Vice President, how often did you communicate with President Trump throughout the negotiations? There were reports that there were multiple rounds, where there were breaks in between negotiations. How often did you communicate with the president throughout those rounds, and what was he saying as you were going through these negotiations that you said fell short? J.D. VANCE Yeah, obviously we were talking to the president consistently. I don’t know how many times we talked to him-six times, twelve times-over the past 21 hours. We also talked to Admiral Cooper, to Pete, to Marco, to the entire national security team. We talked to Scott Basson a number of times. So look, we were constantly in communication with the team because we were negotiating in good faith. And we leave here with a very simple proposal, a method of understanding that is our final and best offer. We’ll see if the Iranians accept it. Thank you.

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