Vice President JD Vance said the United States and Iran can “sit together as teams” for the first time under the ceasefire agreements the two countries are discussing in Switzerland on Sunday.
“What today really represents is the beginning of a technical negotiation that’s not going to solve every disagreement, but it’s going to allow us to sit together as teams for the first time, really, in history to figure out what matters most to the respective parties, to settle those issues, to solve those issues, and get to a better tomorrow,” Vance told reporters while in Switzerland.
Vance has offered a more optimistic tone toward Iran in the days leading up to negotiations, telling reporters before his departure that the two countries will “hopefully make progress” on a permanent agreement to end the war.
The vice president said Sunday that he views the talks, which are being mediated by Pakistan and Qatar, as allowing the Middle East to either “turn over a new leaf” or return to the “old way.”
The negotiations are being led by Vance for the United States, with special envoys Steve Witkoff and Jared Kushner joining him, and Iranian parliamentary Speaker Mohammad Bagher Qalibaf and Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi for Tehran.
President Donald Trump told the Axios Show that the Iranian leaders Washington is talking with are “the smartest group” of officials the U.S. has dealt with, adding that he views the U.S. operation in the region as a regime change. He pointed to the new leaders at the table from Iran as proof of that change.
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“[Mojtaba] Khamenei is different from the father,” Trump said, referring to the late Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, who was killed in the opening days of the war. “We have people that are much less radicalized than the previous two groups.”
Ghalibaf stepped up following the war’s start as lead negotiator for Iran, and Araghchi’s role became more significant as his role as foreign minister moved from a peacetime diplomat into the chief diplomatic negotiator managing the crisis.
