U.S. Vice President JD Vance doubled down on President Donald Trump's threat to end Iran's civilization in one night, with the hint that nuclear weapons could be used.
"A whole civilization will die tonight, never to be brought back again," Trump wrote on Tuesday on Truth Social.
Moments later, Vance echoed those words during a speech in Hungary.
"But we feel confident that we can get a response, whether it's positive or negative, we're going to get a response from the Iranians by 8 o'clock tonight," the vice president said. "I hope they make the right response because what we really want is we want a world where oil and gas is flowing freely."
"That's not going to happen if the Iranians are engaged in acts of economic terrorism, so they've got to know we've got tools in our toolkit that we so far haven't decided to use. The President of the United States can decide to use them, and he will decide to use them if the Iranians don't change their course of conduct," he continued.
"So I hope that they're smart. The president has set a deadline for about 12 hours from now in the United States. We're going to find out, but there's going to be a lot of negotiation between now and then."