VP Vance Defends Letting Iran Keep its Arsenal of Ballistic Missiles

[00:00:00]Can you help us understand President Trump's shift on his stance for Iran's ballistic missile program? Initially, it was a key objective to dismantle it.

[00:00:10]Yesterday, he said it would only be fair if they had some if the countries around Iran also had some. So, when and why did that change and will the final agreement have any restrictions on these missiles?

[00:00:22]>> So, we destroyed a substantial number of their ballistic missiles and their ballistic Excuse me, ballistic missile launchers themselves. It's not just the bullets, but it's the actual gun and that's what we were extremely effective at in destroying during the last 3 months of the campaign. All the president said yesterday is that of course region countries don't give up the right of self-defense. Israel doesn't give up the right of self-defense if Hezbollah fires rockets or drones at Israel. The Iranians don't give up the right of self-defense in their country, but we do expect that as part of the final deal, they are not going to be able to build the kind of missiles that can broadly threaten the entire world. And that's what the President of the United States said yesterday. And And look, I mean, it's it's very simple. You can't tell a country whether Israel or Iran, they're not allowed to have any self-defense.

[00:01:09]That's not what the president has asked.

[00:01:10]That's not what the president has requested, but as part of the final deal, what we want to see is Iran not funding regional instability, funding regional terrorism and of course trying to rebuild their nuclear weapons program. That's the main thing.

[00:01:23]The nuclear weapons program is destroyed. It is gone. If the Iranians decided tomorrow to build a nuclear weapon, then they simply don't have the capacity in order to do that. What we're trying to ensure is they don't rebuild that capacity not just a year from now, 2 years from now, but many, many years from now so that our children never have to worry about a state sponsor of terrorism having a nuclear weapon.