JD Vance says Israeli critics of Iran deal need to ‘wake up and smell the reality’

Vice President JD Vance speaks during a news conference at the White House in Washington, D.C., on June 18, 2026. Photo by Andrew Harnik/Getty Images

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U.S. Vice President JD Vance had sharp words on Thursday for Israeli critics of the Trump administration’s peace deal with Iran, accusing them of being ungrateful to the United States.

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Speaking to reporters during a White House press briefing, Vance said that he was skeptical of reports that Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu was “fuming” over the agreement before sharply criticizing members of the Israeli cabinet who have made negative public remarks.

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“That’s not reflective of the conversations that I’ve had with him, but maybe he’s saying something to somebody else that he’s not saying to me,” Vance said of Netanyahu. “What I will say, and this does bother me, is that you’ve seen people within Bibi’s cabinet who have come out and attacked the deal, and in some ways, very personally attacked the president of the United States.”

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“My message to them would be twofold: One, Donald J. Trump is the only head of state in the entire world who is sympathetic to the nation of Israel at this moment in time, and he happens to be the head of state of the world’s superpower,” Vance said. “If I was in the cabinet of the Israeli government, I might not be attacking the only powerful ally that I have anywhere left in the entire world.”

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Israeli Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich and National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir are among the Israeli officials who have publicly come out against the U.S.-Iran Memorandum of Understanding, with Ben-Gvir writing that Israel would not be bound by the deal.

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Ben-Gvir posted an image of Vance on social media on Thursday, saying the United States ought to have dealt with “the Nazis of the 21st century,” referring to Iran, “just as the United States dealt with the Nazis of the 20th century.”

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In an interview with the New York Times published Thursday, Vance directly named Smotrich and Ben-Gvir as having attacked the deal.

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“I guess my response to them would be — what is your exact proposal? You’re a country of nine million people. You can’t just kill your way out of solving every single national security problem that you have,” Vance told the Times.

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Trump himself has been increasingly critical of the high death toll from Israeli attacks, particularly on Hezbollah terrorists in Lebanon.

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“When two drones are shot into the desert and drop harmlessly, you don’t have to knock down buildings in Beirut. They could behave better, and frankly they could do a better job,” Trump said in a press conference at the G7 summit in France on Wednesday.

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Vance credited Netanyahu with avoiding personal attacks on Trump, but reminded the Israeli cabinet that “two-thirds of the defensive weapons that have protected your homeland have been built by American hands and paid for by American tax dollars.”

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He stated that “the problem for Israel is not Donald J. Trump, and anybody in Israel who thinks their biggest problem is the president of the United States needs to wake up and smell the reality of the situation that country is in.”