Vice-President JD Vance, alongside special envoy Steve Witkoff and Jared Kushner, met with Pakistan's Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif at Lake Lucerne in Switzerland on Sunday for talks aimed at ending the Middle East conflict. The meeting coincided with the first round of direct US-Iran peace negotiations, which Vance hailed as making "great progress."
Trump threatens Iran as talks begin
US President Donald Trump issued new threats on Truth Social, writing that "Iran must immediately stop their highly paid PROXIES in Lebanon from causing trouble. If they don’t, we’ll hit Iran very hard again, just like we did last week, only harder!!!" Iran's state news agency IRNA reported that Iranian negotiators walked out of the building where the talks were held after meeting with the Qatari delegation, protesting Trump's remarks.
Bipartisan criticism mounts
In the US, Senator John Cornyn (R-TX) posted a Wall Street Journal article on X highlighting how Iran has evaded US economic warfare, stating that "economic pressure has largely failed to cow rogue regimes." He had previously warned that the deal would allow Iran to replace ballistic missile assets and enrich uranium again. Susan Rice, former national security adviser under Barack Obama, called the memorandum of understanding (MOU) "flimsy" and "egregious," noting that concessions were granted upfront without a comprehensive nuclear deal. She pointed out that Iran can now sell all its oil and oil products unimpeded, using the money to rebuild, whereas the Obama deal restricted frozen assets to humanitarian purposes.
Criticism from Democrats and media
Senator Cory Booker (D-NJ) rejected giving Trump credit for ending the war, comparing him to "an arsonist starting a fire and getting credit for running out of the burning building." He called the deal "an abject surrender." The New York Post, owned by Rupert Murdoch, published an editorial headlined "With Strait of Hormuz held hostage, Trump’s Iran deal is worse than Obama’s." Senator Ted Cruz (R-TX) previously said giving billions to "theocratic lunatics who want to murder us is an exceptionally bad idea."
Vance optimistic despite walkout
As talks wrapped up late Sunday morning, Vance said negotiators had "already made great progress over just the last few hours, and I expect that we’ll make additional progress in the hours to come." On Israel's operations in Lebanon, he said "these things are always a little bit messy … but I actually feel great about where we are in Lebanon." US Energy Secretary Chris Wright said on ABC's This Week that the talks would "set out what the Iranian goals are and what they think the tradeoffs they might have to make are." He noted that US military actions have put Iran in a "massively different situation" with less leverage. Wright declined to predict when US gas prices would return to pre-war levels but said they "will continue to head down."
