US Vice President JD Vance told Fox News on Monday that Iran’s “bully” behaviour in the region was hindering the progress of Arab Gulf states.
“Now that the 12-day war appears to be effectively over, we have an opportunity, I think, to restart a real peace process,” Vance said. “This is not just about two countries, Iran and Israel. All of these Gulf Arab states, they want peace. They want to invest, they want to build artificial intelligence hardware. They want to sort of come into the new economy, and that was impossible when you had Iran that was – as the president said – acting like a bully across the Middle East.”
“We really think that if the Iranians are smart about the path forward, this could be a new dawn of an economic age of prosperity, of course, for Gulf Arab allies, for us, for the Israelis, for everybody, but it’s going to require the Iranians play it smart from here,” he added.
As to the notion of regime change that Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has been touting, Vance said “if the Iranian people want to do something about their own leadership, that’s up to the Iranian people.”