Ben Domenech

Yeah, it's great to be with you, as always.

Look, I think J.D.

Vance has made himself quite available to the press in the past week plus because he's been on this book tour.

And the fact that it's coincident with this Iran deal being announced, this memorandum of understanding, is something that has led to him basically becoming the public face defending this.

Whether that's something that he chose to do or not, he's leaned into it, and he certainly has performed, I think, admirably from the perspective of the White House and the president in fending off a lot of the different critiques that have been laid against this deal, both by Republicans in Congress and by people outside who are concerned that it includes a number of different aspects that could end up with Iran benefiting significantly, despite the fact that their military has been largely destroyed.

What Vance said is that essentially this MOU has a number of different things that aren't in it that they're trusting the Iranians to live up to.

He referred to it as a gentleman's agreement.

That's something that I think will probably ring a note of a little bit of skepticism in people's ears because it's the same phrase that was used during the Obama years about their deal with Iran.

And I think that the fact is that the critics of this deal will basically say the Iranians can't be trusted.

In fact, there's also emerging skepticism just given the backlash from Republicans on Capitol Hill.

We saw Roger Wicker, the powerful chair of the Armed Services Committee.

We saw Joni Ernst.

We saw others today coming out and expressing their skepticism about this $300 billion fund, which of course does not include taxpayer money from the United States, but could include a lot of other investment back into Iran, that that could go to doing the same kinds of things that they've done in the past.

The Ayatollah's grocery list doesn't exactly change.

He can just Instacart a number of missiles again and, of course, you know, fund the kind of terror groups that they have in the past.

The vice president responded to our own Mary Margaret Olhan by saying that there were red lines that if the Iranians crossed, you know, would lead to them reacting and bombing them again.

The president has said as much as well.

And I think that there are a lot of people in Washington who think it's inevitable that those lines will be crossed just given the Iranians' past behavior.

I think it's about getting to the next round.

I also think, though, that the fact that the Europeans gave him such a warm welcome at the G7 and the fact that so many of them are backing this deal, especially the French, that led him to, I think, want to do it as quickly as possible.