Posted originally on CTH on June 17, 2025 | Sundance 

I cannot give all the particulars to backstop my perspective, however, Vice President JD Vance has traditional training and perspective on leadership within massive organizations, enhanced by his military service. Essentially, ‘never compromise your leadership‘.

Vice President JD Vance would not publish the following message on social media, without previously approving the entire statement through President Donald Trump. If Vance did not discuss this with Trump, Vance would stay quiet. That said, here is the message from JD Vance:

“Look, I’m seeing this from the inside, and am admittedly biased towards our president (and my friend), but there’s a lot of crazy stuff on social media, so I wanted to address some things directly on the Iran issue:

First, POTUS has been amazingly consistent, over 10 years, that Iran cannot have a nuclear weapon. Over the last few months, he encouraged his foreign policy team to reach a deal with the Iranians to accomplish this goal. The president has made clear that Iran cannot have uranium enrichment. And he said repeatedly that this would happen one of two ways–the easy way or the “other” way.

Second, I’ve seen a lot of confusion over the issue of “civilian nuclear power” and “uranium enrichment.” These are distinct issues. Iran could have civilian nuclear power without enrichment, but Iran rejected that. Meanwhile, they’ve enriched uranium far above the level necessary for any civilian purpose. They’ve been found in violation of their non-proliferation obligations by the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), which is hardly a rightwing organization.

It’s one thing to want civilian nuclear energy. It’s another thing to demand sophisticated enrichment capacity. And it’s still another to cling to enrichment while simultaneously violating basic non-proliferation obligations and enriching right to the point of weapons-grade uranium.

I have yet to see a single good argument for why Iran needed to enrich uranium well above the threshold for civilian use. I’ve yet to see a single good argument for why Iran was justified in violating its non-proliferation obligations. I’ve yet to see a single good pushback against the IAEA’s findings.

Meanwhile, the president has shown remarkable restraint in keeping our military’s focus on protecting our troops and protecting our citizens.

He may decide he needs to take further action to end Iranian enrichment. That decision ultimately belongs to the president. And of course, people are right to be worried about foreign entanglement after the last 25 years of idiotic foreign policy.

But I believe the president has earned some trust on this issue. And having seen this up close and personal, I can assure you that he is only interested in using the American military to accomplish the American people’s goals. Whatever he does, that is his focus.” (source)

Accepting what JD Vance is saying here (emphasis mine) the most Occam’s razor implication is that President Trump is going to authorize U.S. bunker busting bombs, the 30,000/lb deep penetrating bombs [GBU-57 Massive Ordnance Penetrator (MOP)] that only the USA has in the arsenal.

This approach takes the USA activity from “support”, to active operational engagement.   Hence Vance saying “take further action,” and the following message from President Trump, “nobody does it better.”