Vice President JD Vance said during a press conference on Thursday that the conflict with Iran will last as long as the Iranians keep shooting at ships. “When you ask, ‘When will this end?’ you’re asking me a question like, ‘When will the Iranians stop shooting at ships?’ I think the reality is, I don’t know the answer to that. You’d have to ask the Iranians,” he said.

KAITLAN COLLINS, CNN: In terms of the war and the timeline, this administration has put timelines on there before. What you just said about no negotiations happening with Iran – will this war be over by the time of the midterm elections? VICE PRESIDENT JD VANCE: I don’t – I wouldn’t call it a war. Right now, there is no active shooting. I recognize there have been places where this has flared up. Major combat operations – again, major combat operations lasted for about six weeks, and since then, we destroyed, of course, their nuclear facilities with Midnight Hammer. With Epic Fury, we destroyed their defense-industrial base for producing weapons and also a lot of the conventional military, and we made it harder for them to rebuild that nuclear program. When you ask, “When will this end?” you’re asking me a question like, “When will the Iranians stop shooting at ships?” I think the reality is, I don’t know the answer to that. You’d have to ask the Iranians. When will the Iranians shooting at ships stop having an effect on world energy markets? The answer is, it has less effect day by day. So what we’re going to do is not depend on the Iranians behaving responsibly or negotiating in good faith. What we’re going to do is use the tools that we have at our disposal to ensure that the American people, one, never have to deal with the threat of an Iranian nuclear program, and two, the world energy markets are properly supplied. [inaudible follow-up question] But, Kaitlan, if the Iranians keep on shooting at commercial ships, again, we have, I think, a responsibility – but certainly we’re the only ones with the capability – to ensure that the Iranians are not destroying world energy markets. And our attitude is we’re not going to set an artificial timeline because, let’s just say hypothetically, let’s say I told you three months. Let’s say I told you three days, okay? And the Iranians start blowing up oil and gas ships, and the United States is the only country with the capability to ensure that those oil and gas ships get to market. Well, what I would say is it would be irresponsible for us to provide our strategy on a timeline for an Iranian nation that simply cannot honor its commitments and cannot stop shooting at commercial ships.

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