Vance: Iran Agrees to Nuke Inspections. Treasury Grants 60-Day Oil Production, Sale License. Israel: “Security Zone” Remains Ours

The United States and Iran have agreed to four major points to permit peace negotiations to continue for the next 60 days, including Iran’s allowing inspectors to monitor the nation’s nuclear development.

And today, Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent announced that his department’s Office of Foreign Assets Control has authorized the production, sale, and delivery of oil and petroleum products of Iranian origin.

Meanwhile, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Defense Minister Israel Katz again said Israel will not surrender conquered territories in Syria, Gaza, and Lebanon that they term “security zones.”

Netanyahu vowed that Israel will remain in southern Lebanon as “long as we need” at a conference yesterday. He reiterated that promise today on X. 

But National Security Minister Itamar Ben Gvir went further in a television interview. All of Lebanon, he said, must be an Israeli “playground;” i.e., Israel must conquer the whole country.

Vance Briefing

Speaking after the opening round of peace talks concluded at Lake Lucerne in Switzerland, Vice President JD Vance said “we made a lot of good progress. We did exactly what we wanted to do, which is accomplish four things for the American people.” 

The two sides “wanted to build a mechanism for keeping the Strait of Hormuz open,” Vance said:

It is open.… We actually set up the coordination mechanism so that we could demine the Strait of Hormuz, so that when there are the conflicts that inevitably come up, we can make sure we work through them, rather than that leading to escalation, and that is exactly what we did yesterday.

Second, he said, the two sides will create a “deconfliction” mechanism to ensure the ceasefire succeeds by continuing to talk. 

Third, he said, Iran will permit inspectors from the International Atomic Energy Agency back into their country, “a major milestone for the American people” and “the first step in permanently denuclearizing or permanently ending a nuclear weapons program in Iran. And that’s exactly what we want to do. That’s exactly what we asked to happen. We made a lot of great progress on other nuclear talks.”

Last, he said, the two sides established the “process for the technical negotiations that will follow.”

“Our teams working with the Iranians, the Qataris, and the Pakistanis made great progress yesterday,” he said: “They will continue to work at the technical level … and then those technical negotiations are going to continue over the weeks and days to come.”

In keeping with the progress, Bessent announced that “Treasury has issued a temporary 60-day general license authorizing the production, delivery, and sale of Iranian oil.”

President Trump nearly derailed the talks yesterday with yet another bellicose threat. When Iran threatened to close the strait in response to more Israeli attacks in Lebanon against Hezbollah, Trump told Iranian officials “you close it, and you won’t have a country.”

“You won’t even make it back to your f***ing country,” Trump warned.

He also threatened to take over Iran and the Strait of Hormuz and seize 20 percent of Iran’s oil.

Israel Won’t Abandon Conquered Territory

Meanwhile, Israeli leaders continued to say they would never abandon the so-called security zone they have established.

“My directive, and that of the Minister of Defense, to the IDF is clear and has not changed,” Netanyahu wrote on X: 

Our fighters in southern Lebanon have full freedom of action to thwart any direct or developing threat to them or to the residents of the North. The IDF has no restrictions on this matter.

I stand behind them; the entire nation stands behind them.

My stance is firm on our remaining in the security zone in southern Lebanon for as long as is required in order to protect the residents of the North and all citizens of the state.

Speaking at the JNS International Policy Summit on Sunday, Netanyahu said,

We established a security zone in Gaza, we established a security zone in Syria, we established a security zone in Lebanon, and we shall keep it as long as necessary to protect our people….

We changed Israel’s security doctrine….

We initiate. We attack. We surprise. And we attack those enemies that seek our destruction, that seek to kill us. We attack them before they have a chance to do so.… We kill them first.

Said Defense Minister Israel Katz:

“Israel has no intention of withdrawing from the Beaufort [Castle], which is an integral part of the security zone in Lebanon and essential for the defense of the Galilee settlements and IDF forces.”

As Prime Minister Netanyahu and I have clarified — Israel will not withdraw from the security zone in Lebanon.

Ben Gvir continued to call for conquering Lebanon.

“Lebanon, all of Lebanon, should become our playground,” he said during a television interview:

All of Lebanon should be our goal.

“If Lebanon allows its territory to be turned into a terror base against the State of Israel, Beirut needs to understand that it cannot continue to conduct business as usual,” he said during a meeting of his Otzma Yehudit party in the Knesset:

Whoever chooses war against Israel must bear the consequences. My position is that we cannot tolerate a single tear from an Israeli mother, even if there are tears from a thousand Lebanese mothers, and we need to keep going.

Last week, Ben Gvir said that “for every tear of an Israeli mother, a thousand Lebanese mothers must weep. All of Lebanon must burn.”

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