Vice President JD Vance on Wednesday criticized the speaker of Iran’s parliament for claiming that the US had violated the ceasefire deal, saying Mohammad Bagher Ghalibaf’s complaints “didn’t make sense.”
“I actually wonder how good he is at understanding English, because there are things that he said that, frankly, didn’t make sense in the context of the negotiations that we’ve had,” Vance told reporters outside Air Force Two, as he was leaving Hungary to return to the US.
Hours before, Ghalibaf posted a statement on X that claimed the US had broken the countries’ Tuesday night agreement by failing to halt strikes on Lebanon, violating Iranian airspace and denying Iran’s right to uranium enrichment.
While Vance allowed that “ceasefires are always messy,” he insisted that the US was abiding by the ceasefire and that negotiations were still progressing along.
He also rejected Iran’s claim that Lebanon was protected by the ceasefire and that Iran could continue with enrichment, arguing that the US never agreed to the point on Lebanon and one of President Donald Trump’s primary demands is for the regime to give up its enriched uranium.
“We don’t really concern ourselves with what they claim they have the right to do,” Vance said. “We concern ourselves with what they actually do.”
Vance also sought to strike a positive note on the state of the talks, casting Ghalibaf’s statement as a sign that “there’s a lot of points of agreement” outside of his specific complaints.
“He said that there are a few points of disagreement,” Vance said. “Well, that must mean that there’s a lot of points of agreement because there’s a 15-point plan floating around. There’s a 10-point plan floating around.”
