US Vice President J.D. Vance said it was “undecided” whether President Donald Trump would sign an interim memorandum of understanding with Iran and that the two countries were still negotiating “several language points.”
“I think it’s hard to say exactly when or if the president will sign the memorandum. We’re going back and forth on some linguistic points,” Vance told reporters on the tarmac at Joint Base Andrews on Thursday.
While stressing that progress has been made, Vance said there are some moving parts regarding Iran’s nuclear program and enriched uranium.
“There are some issues around nuclear, highly enriched stockpiles and enrichment issues, so we’re consulting with them, and we think they’re negotiating in good faith, at least for now,” Vance said.
“Hopefully we’ll continue to make progress and the president will be in a position to support a deal, but obviously that’s still up in the air.”
He said he could not yet guarantee whether such an agreement would be reached.
“We’ll get to a point where we can slowly solve these problems, but we need to make a little bit more progress. I can’t guarantee we’ll get there, but we have a pretty good feeling right now,” he said.
Despite the recent exchange of attacks, Vance said the ceasefire remains in place but that the United States reserves the right to launch defensive strikes.
“These ceasefires are always a little confusing,” he said in response to a question from CNN’s Alejandra Jaramillo, adding: “Sometimes these things flare up a little bit.”
