Press Gaggle: JD Vance Speaks to Reports After Air Force Two Arrival - May 28, 2026

Hey, guys, good, good evening. It's good to see you. Uh, thanks for coming along today. Had a really good event with the Air Force Academy graduates. Really proud of those guys. I think they're gonna do great. It's just a really cool thing. I mean, one of the real highlights of my job, so was happy to be there with them.

And, um, you know, hopefully they have a good time celebrating with their family tonight. Questions?

Yes, I, I hope you're, you got the chance to ice your hand. There was a lot of hand-shaking --

[Laughs]

-- up there on the stage.

You know, it's funny. The hand-shaking was less painful than the salute. When you do a thousand salutes right in a row, it actually, uh, stresses your shoulder a little bit. So it was like doing Sun Gods back in Marine Corps boot camp.

Mr. Vice President, on or off can you give us an update on where these negotiations are? And when do you expect the president to sign this MOU?

Well, I think it's hard to say exactly when or if the president's gonna sign the MOU. We're going back and forth on a couple of language points. Uh, I do think that we've made a lot of progress here. It's very clear that I think, uh, the Iranians, uh, they want a deal, and they want to open the Straits of Hormuz.

And we want them to open the Straits of Hormuz. There are a couple of issues on, uh, the nuclear, uh, stuff, the, the, the highly enriched stockpile and also the question enrichment. So, you know, we're going back and forth with them. We do think they're negotiating at least so far in good faith, and we're making some progress.

Hopefully we'll continue to make progress. The president will be in a position where he can endorse the agreement. But obviously, uh, that's still TBD.

[Crosstalk]

You said, you just said now that we believe that Iran is, uh, negotiating in good faith. So why do we believe that the ceasefire is holding when we keep on intercepting missiles that we keep on striking?

Well, you know, these ceasefires are always a little messy, and sometimes the guys at the lower level aren't communicating with the guys at the top level. Uh, sometimes people make mistakes. But even when the ceasefire is holding, as we've seen, not just in Iran, but all over the world, sometimes these things have little flare-ups.

I think our approach has been, uh, to enforce the ceasefire, to defend ourselves when fired upon. The president's been very clear that if we're fired upon, we're gonna fire back. But, uh, if you compare the conflict now to where it was five, six weeks ago, uh, I think the president's ceasefire is very much holding.

And a quick follow up on, you, you discussed the nuclear, uh, enrichment. Does that mean that Iran is open to putting on paper something regarding either removing the re- -- uranium from the country or allowing it to be diluted or doing something with it in this, in this agreement right now?

Yeah, you know, we'll see, right? I mean, part of this, part of what we're trying to do here is really set the stage for a successful negotiation. There are certain details that are gonna have to be figured out that are gonna take a little bit of time to [Inaudible] them. So just take, for example, even if you come to an agreement on, let's say, destroying the enriched stockpile, how do you do it? When do you do it? How do you actually get access to it? As the president said repeatedly, we did very effectively bury that stuff very deeply underground.

So there are a lot of details to work out. But what I mean is I think we're making progress. We're getting to a point where we could potentially sit down and settle these issues, but that requires us to make a little bit more progress. I can't guarantee that we're gonna get there, but right now I feel pretty good about it.

Have there ever been concerns that the US is being strung along by Iran?

Well, I think there's always a concern whenever you're in a negotiation, um, that you're, you're, you know, the other party is not actually gonna meet up their obligation. They're actually not gonna satisfy their end of the obligation. But all you can do is, is, uh, try to verify, right? We can try to get things in a position where we're getting a good win for the American people.

You don't take anything on faith. Even the guarantee that they not build or procure a nuclear program, which is something they have agreed to, we're gonna have to verify that over time. So, uh, I think there's always a concern that the negotiating party is not gonna meet their end of the bargain, so that's why we have verification processes in place.

I will say, and this is my last comment on this, if you look at what we've already accomplished here, assuming that we're able to get to a, a final agreement here, we're reopening the Straits of Hormuz, we've already decimated their conventional military. And we're in a position where we could substantially set back their nuclear program, not just during the term of this president, but over the long term.

That's a very, very good thing for the American people. So we're not there yet, but we're very close. We're gonna keep on working at it. Thank you, guys. Have a good evening.

[Inaudible]