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U.S. Vice President JD Vance sounded a warning on competing factions within Iran, with some open to good faith negotiation with the U.S. in the coming weeks and other spoilers, in comments to a Hungarian university.<\/p>\n
The\u00a0Mathias Corvinus Collegium received apologies from the U.S. Vice President for his late arrival on Wednesday morning, given he had been up \u201cvery late last night\u201d negotiating a temporary truce between the United States, Iran, and Israel. Even before that ceasefire got off to a bumpy start as Wednesday wore on, with apparent confusion over what the agreement actually contained, Vance warned his audience that the \u201cfragile truce\u201d was under threat from spoiler elements inside Iranian society who don\u2019t want peace to succeed.<\/p>\n
Hailing the achievements of the U.S. military in the conflict to date, Vance reflected he had \u201clearnt a lot about the Iranian system, and a lot about the way the Iranians negotiate\u201d over the course of talks so far and explained that there were several competing factions within Iranian society, and that while the U.S. had been speaking to what seemed to be the most powerful \u2014 the Iranian foreign minister \u2014 others were dead-set against peace with America. He said:<\/p>\n
\n\u2026just in the response we\u2019ve seen in the various segments of Iran, you have on one hand people who have responded very favourably, the Foreign Minister who said \u2018we agree to the United States terms, we\u2019ll do a ceasefire, we\u2019ll do a negotiation, we\u2019ll open the Strait of Hormuz, we\u2019ll see if we can come to more agreement down the road\u2019.<\/p>\n
Some of the people have responded favourably and have said the right things, and then you have some people on social media within their system who are basically lying about what we have accomplished militarily, they are lying about the nature of the agreement, they are lying about the nature of the ceasefire.<\/p>\n
So you have, even within their system, and this is why I say this is a fragile truce, you have people who clearly want to come to the negotiating table and work with us to find a good deal, and then you have people who are lying about even the fragile truce that we have already struck. And that\u2019s the interesting thing about their system\u2026\u00a0Ultimately, it\u2019s up to the Iranians how to negotiate, I hope they make the right decision.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n
Vice President Vance said President Trump had instructed him and the team to negotiate in good faith and to allow the Iranians to come forward and do the same, and that the U.S. team shouldn\u2019t lean too heavily on its military and economic advantages unless the Iranians proved unwilling to approach things with an open mind. Vance revealed\u00a0he\u2019d been warned ahead of talks by Donald Trump that \u201cthe Iranians are better negotiators than they are fighters\u201d, but that if they weren\u2019t negotiating in good faith, they would discover \u201cthe President of the United States is not one to mess around\u201d.<\/p>\n