Vice President JD Vance said that US and Israeli interests diverge, suggesting that Tel Aviv was acting in Lebanon without Washington’s approval.
The US and Israel “have a lot of shared interests, but we also have some situations where our interests diverge,” Vance said on Fox News on Monday. He added that Tel Aviv was “freelancing in Lebanon.”
The Vice President’s remarks followed Israel’s bombing of Lebanon’s capital city, provoking Iran to attack Israel. After the Iranian attack, President Donald Trump demanded that Israel not respond. Just hours later, Israel bombed Iran, prompting Tehran to respond again.
The attacks nearly caused the fragile ceasefire between the US and Iran to collapse. Trump is attempting to negotiate an end to the war with Iran. However, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is escalating the war against Lebanon, which is undermining the negotiations.
The Vice President said that Trump plans to force Israel to accept whatever deal the US makes with Iran. “I think where the president has been very clear here is that while Israel obviously has some objectives that it has, the United States’ main objective in Iran is to ensure that Iran does not have a nuclear weapon,” Vance says.
He added, “Now, Israel may like that, they may not like that. But fundamentally, we think this is in the best interest of the United States of America.”
While the White House now claims that the purpose of the war against Iran was to prevent Tehran from having nuclear weapons, Iranian negotiators proposed a deal that would have significantly restricted its nuclear program before the war. Trump rejected that deal and started the war with Iran.
