President Trump: President Donald Trump declared a ceasefire between Israel and Iran, following a successful U.S. attack on Iran’s three nuclear sites. These bombings, said Vice President JD Vance in an interview with Brett Baier of Fox News, “obliterated the Iranian nuclear program.”

“We are now in a place where we weren't a week ago,” said Vice President Vance. “A week ago, Iran was very close to having a nuclear weapon. Now Iran is incapable of building a nuclear weapon with the equipment they have because we destroyed it.”

Israel “helped us destroy the Iranian nuclear program. They've also destroyed the conventional missile capability of Iran that threatened the country of Israel,” Vice President Vance noted. “For the Iranians, I think this is a new opportunity to actually pursue the path of peace.”

Vice President Vance reiterated that regime change in Iran is “not our mission.”

“Our mission was to destroy the nuclear facilities and the nuclear program of Iran, which we of course did. I think what the president's also said is that [if] the Iranian people want to make a decision about regime change, that's between the Iranian people and the regime.”

If hostilities cease, said Vice President Vance, Iran and Israel have an opportunity to “restart a real peace process.” But it goes beyond these two nations. “All of these Gulf Arab states, they want peace, they want to invest, they want to build artificial intelligence, hardware, they want to. . .come into the new economy, and that was impossible when you had Iran that was, as the President said, acting like a bully across the Middle East.”

“We really think that if the Iranians are smart about the path forward, this could be a new dawn of an economic age of prosperity, of course, for our Gulf Arab allies, for us, for the Israelis, for everybody. But it's going to require the Iranians play it smart from here,” stressed Vice President Vance.

The President has been clear. The U.S. is ready for a direct conversation with the Iranians. But if they try to rebuild their nuclear weapons capacity, “they're going to be on the wrong end of American power once again,” stated Vice President Vance. “We don't want that. I think they don't want that, but the ball's in their hands. VOA/SP