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Vance Speaks After First Round of U.S.-Iran Talks; Vance Speaks as Encouraging Progress Made in U.S.-Iran Talks; British Prime Minister Keir Starmer Announces Resignation. Aired 7-7:30a ET

Aired June 22, 2026 - 07:00   ET

THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.

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KATE BOLDUAN, CNN ANCHOR: Breaking news this morning. We're standing by to hear from the vice president, J.D. Vance, in Switzerland after mediators said that the Iran and the United States have made encouraging progress during the most recent round of talks, despite new and wild threats coming from President Trump.

SARA SIDNER, CNN ANCHOR: A powerful tornado outbreak sweeping through the Midwest, killing two people, leaving a trail of destruction in its wake. Tens of thousands of people still without power this morning. We're tracking the latest forecast.

JOHN BERMAN, CNN ANCHOR: Reflecting pool fiasco. The president says his embattled multi-million dollar project will have to be drained again and claims it has been attacked by vandals. One person arrested told the papers all he did was touch the paint that was peeling off the bottom.

I'm John Berman with Sara Sidner and Kate Bolduan. This is CNN News Central.

BOLDUAN: We're standing by to hear from the vice president, J.D. Vance, any moment now in Switzerland after this first round of new talks between the United States and Iran. And also despite some wildly aggressive threats, new threats from President Trump, that reporting suggests nearly derailed the whole thing.

The countries mediating these talks, Qatar and Pakistan, though, saying encouraging progress has been made. The two sides have apparently agreed to create a high-level committee to oversee the negotiations, and it seems like Iran is already seeing some economic benefit. The country's foreign minister says oil sanctions have been waived, some frozen assets released, and a reconstruction and development plan has been developed, though a lot of lacking detail there.

Now, though, to the latest Trump effect on it all, the talks hit a wall at one point this weekend, it was -- it seemed at least, when the president leveled a new threat directly at even the Iranians sitting at the negotiating table, saying that the U.S. might take over the Strait of Hormuz and charge tolls if a permanent deal is not reached, and then he told Fox News, quote, you close the strait and you won't have a country. You won't even make it back to your f-ing country. CNN's Nic Robertson is in Lucerne, Switzerland. Kevin Liptak is live at the White House. Kevin, what's the latest that you're hearing from there this morning giving those new threats from President Trump?

KEVIN LIPTAK, CNN SENIOR WHITE HOUSE REPORTER: Right. And officials do describe progress in these talks. They say the two sides went into the night and overnight discussing some of these issues. But that's not, I think, to downplay just how strained these talks became at certain moments because of what President Trump was putting out on Truth Social. You know, he talked about, for example, the importance of Iran ending their support for the proxies, saying that if they don't, they would hit Iran very hard again, just like we did last week, only harder. That caused a brief pause in the discussions as the Iranians protested that.

You also saw this back and forth between President Trump and the president of Iran, who said, as these negotiations were ongoing, that Iran would never back down from its right to enrich uranium. In response, President Trump said that he, quote, better watch his mouth.

So, clearly, an enormous amount of animosity between these two presidents sort of arguing from afar, even as the two sides were at the negotiating table there in Lucerne. But that is not to say that progress wasn't made. You know, the negotiators said that there was encouraging progress, that they had been conducted in, quote, positive and constructive, atmosphere. It seems as if the two issues that were most discussed in this round of negotiations were how to reopen the Strait of Hormuz and how to bring the fighting to an end in Lebanon.

Now, we should point out that both of those issues appeared to have been resolved in the memorandum of understanding. It does not seem as if the two sides got into very technical, detailed discussions over the fate of Iran's nuclear program, which, in the end, was the point of this 60-day technical negotiating period. It seems as if those discussions will be to come. Kate?

BOLDUAN: Kevin, I'm going to grab it from you. Thank you so much.

You saw it there, the vice president now speaking from Switzerland.

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Let's listen in.

J.D. VANCE, U.S. VICE PRESIDENT: We did exactly what we wanted to do, which is accomplish four things for the American people. First, we wanted to build a mechanism for keeping the Strait of Hormuz open. It is open. We've seen, of course, gas prices and oil prices come down, millions and millions of barrels of crude and natural gas flowing through the Strait of Hormuz that weren't flowing before. But we also wanted to make sure that we actually set up the coordination mechanism so that we could de-mine 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. Number two, we also wanted to build a mechanism, a similar mechanism, for de-confliction for the regional ceasefire. As the president of the United States has himself said, sometimes these ceasefires just mean you're shooting a little bit less. But we wanted to make sure that we had the proper coordination set up so that if there is shooting, if Hezbollah fires at Israel, or if Israel responds, if there are other conflicts that arise in the region, we're actually talking to each other and figuring out how to stop the shooting, how to make the region safer, our allies and everybody else. We set that up as well.

Number three, we, and this is probably what we're most excited about as Americans, the Iranians have agreed to invite IAEA inspectors back into their country. That is 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 wanted to do. That's exactly what we asked to happen. We made a lot of great progress on other nuclear talks.

And that leads me to the final thing that we wanted to accomplish, which is actually set up the process for the technical negotiations that will follow. Our teams working with the Iranians, the Qataris and the Pakistanis made great progress yesterday. They will continue to work at the technical level with the teams here in Burgenstock. And then those technical negotiations are going to continue over the weeks and days to come.

We wanted to set up a structure for that so that you could have proper political oversight, but obviously, as much as this place is very beautiful, I can't stay here for the next 60 days. I'm about to go back home to the United States. But the technical teams are going to be working with proper oversight to make sure that we're accomplishing the objectives that matter for everybody.

So, those are the things that we wanted to accomplish. We came here. We did exactly that. The way that I think about it is very simple. We laid a very good foundation for a successful final deal. The final deal is the house. We set the foundation. We haven't built the house, but we've laid a successful foundation to get to a good place for the American people.

I think it's important for all of us to appreciate how much was done, but, honestly, there is still a lot to do as we continue to make progress on the nuclear talks, on the economic talks, as we continue to de-mine the straits and ensure that flow of traffic continues to pick back up. A lot of progress, but still some work to do, and we're very committed to doing exactly that.

So, with that, I'm happy to take a few questions from guys in the audience. I appreciate you guys being here. Let's start with you.

REPORTER: (INAUDIBLE) can you just clarify and tell us what happened?

VANCE: No, they didn't throw a wrench in the system. The thing with the Iranians, yes they did threaten to walk out, or at least there were social media threats that they would walk out, but we were negotiating well past 1:00 in the morning yesterday, so they didn't walk out, and their technical team is still here in Burgenstock working with our technical team actually, as we speak, though I imagine maybe some of them are taking a break to watch this news conference.

But, look, what we told the Iranians yesterday is, when you guys engage in what us millennials might call trash talk, you can't expect the president of the United States not to respond and not to correct the record. So, when they say things that aren't true, the president is going to respond to it. I'm going to respond to it. Americans are going to respond to it. When they make threats that aren't rooted in reality, they have to accept that the president of the United States is actually going to set the record straight. That's all that happened.

So, yes, there was a little bit of threatening, there was a little bit of whining, but at the end of the day, the talks continued, and we made great progress.

REPORTER: On the nuclear inspectors, when do you expect them to be welcome into Iran? Is there a timeframe that you guys are looking at? And also in terms of when we could see this entire conflict end, do you think this can end by the midterm elections?

VANCE: Well, look, right now, the conflict is in a ceasefire, and, certainly, our hope is that we get to the final deal and a permanent settlement. But right now, I think we've made great progress, and we should all celebrate that.

In terms of when the nuclear inspectors are going to start, it's funny, we were trying to call some of the inspectors last night around 2:00 in the morning. As you can expect, not many people were answering their phone at 2:00 in the morning. I expect that will happen at the minimum this week.

But we think even some of those conversations with the inspectors and with the IAEA could happen as soon as today. But I haven't checked in with our team since we made that 2:00 A.M. phone call to some of those inspectors.

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REPORTER: Mr. Vice President. Thank you, Mr. Vice President. Did you going in expect the Iranians to make Lebanon as much of a linchpin as they ended up doing? And how would you describe the progress on Lebanon? I know Mr. Araghchi said it was very good progress, but what's your characterization of it?

VANCE: Yes, I would describe it as very good progress, too. I mean, look, we want a regional ceasefire, right? We want Hezbollah to stop firing at our friends in Israel. We want Israelis to be able to live in peace. We also want to make sure that, you know, when things happen, they don't spiral into a broader escalation.

And so we've been, I think, very good at setting up what we're calling a de-confliction mechanism. But what it really is is to say that when things happen, the sides are actually talking to one another. Sometimes, you know, you got a bit of a chicken and egg problem, that you've got a junior guy who fires a drone that didn't have approval from the high command. Okay, of course, Israel has to respond to that. But then sometimes that response, we could actually have a better and more peaceful situation if Israel responds in the context of a conversation that's ongoing between Hezbollah, Lebanon, Israel, and other partners in the region.

There really hasn't been a mechanism to have those discussions until basically around 4:00 P.M. yesterday Burgenstock time when we set that up.

So, what we're trying to do is to say, first of all, Israel and every other nation in the region has the right of self-defense, but we want to make sure that everybody has that right of self-defense in the background where we're talking about how to deescalate these conflicts rather than spiraling out of control.

Sometimes what'll happen is that if a conflict spirals out of control, that's worse for everybody's self-defense and worse for everybody's security. So, we've actually got the process in place to ensure that that doesn't -- that escalation doesn't happen.

Now, I will say you already see the fruits of that. Over the past 24 hours have probably been the most peaceful that we've seen the situation in Lebanon. The previous 24 hours were pretty good. Obviously, there was some shooting about 72 hours ago.

So, this is a work in progress, but what we've done is actually set up the operation so that we can ensure it doesn't spiral out of control in the future.

REPORTER: Does the U.S. want Israel to withdraw forces from Southern Lebanon?

VANCE: Well, we want Israel's security to be protected, and we also want Lebanon's sovereignty to be protected, and this is going to be an ongoing conversation. The Israelis have been very clear they do not have territorial intentions on South Lebanon. The reason they feel they have to be there is because they're worried about Hezbollah fighters in South Lebanon firing into Israel.

We do believe, of course, it's going to require a lot of hard work, that we can get to a place where Lebanon's territorial integrity and sovereignty is protected, Israel's security is protected, and that's going to require some coordination with the Lebanese Armed Forces, and also it's going to require the Iranians to rein in Hezbollah.

That's all the sort of things that we were talking about yesterday. And, again, I think that we got much further compared to where we were just 24 hours ago.

REPORTER: Have you spoken with Prime Minister Netanyahu during any of this process at all in the recent days? VANCE: Yes, we were in constant -- we were in constant contact with the Israelis yesterday, but also, of course, with the Saudis and the Emiratis and others in the region. We talked to the Lebanese yesterday as well. So, we were constantly trying to keep our regional friends updated about this.

This is not a deal that the United States is imposing on the region. This is a deal that the region has desperately asked the United States to put in place. Obviously, the headlines have been very focused about what's been going on between the United States and Iran, but this region has been a basket case for a very long time.

And what the president has set us to do, again, lay the foundation, see if we can get to a permanent peace. If we can't, the president of the United States still has a lot of options to accomplish America's security objectives, but he has certainly committed us to this pathway for now, and we're going to keep on working and seeing what we can accomplish.

And then I want to just -- before we depart here, I want to say one last thing. I've seen some misreporting about frozen or unfrozen Iranian assets. One of the other things that we wanted to do, and, you know, it wasn't as high of a priority for us, for obvious reasons, but we wanted to make sure that we set up a process where if, if we ever unfreeze Iranian assets, we can ensure that those -- that that money, that Iranian money, goes to help the people of Iran and not to fund terrorism.

So, Jared Kushner actually came up with a very interesting solution with the Qataris, where, basically, again, if there is any frozen Iranian assets that are unfrozen, then we have approval over that process, the Qataris have approval over that process, and then the money would actually go to buy American soy, American corn, and American wheat for the benefit of the Iranian people.

[07:15:00]

And as much as I see some of the press misreporting on this, and, of course, you know, buttressed by what the Iranians are saying or -- not all Iranians, I want to be clear. There are a lot of Iranians who are telling the truth about what happened yesterday, but you see some social media reporting that gets this wrong.

But, fundamentally, what Jared and the Qataris and the entire team here in Burgenstock accomplished is, to me, a classic Trump deal, where if Iranian assets are ever unfrozen, they're going to go to make American farmers richer and to feed the Iranian people. That's a very, very good and very classic Trump deal that's great for our people, great for the people of Iran, and fundamentally, again, will contribute to this regional security architecture that we've built and that we're going to work very hard to ensure that it endures.

So, from Switzerland, thank you all for being here. I appreciate the questions and I appreciate the engagement. I am looking forward to going back home and we'll certainly keep everybody updated on what happens in the days and weeks to come. Thank you all. SIDNER: All right. Vice President J.D. Vance there in Lucerne talking about the deal that they are pushing forward, which included something we haven't heard a lot about, but letting inspectors, and they said that -- he said that they were trying to get them in as early as 2:00 A.M. this morning, and, of course, nobody was answering the phone, but that they may come in today or as early as this week.

Let's bring in Nic Robertson, who has been in Lucerne watching all of this unfold. Nic, give us some sense of what you heard here that stood out to you.

NIC ROBERTSON, CNN INTERNATIONAL DIPLOMATIC EDITOR: Yes. I think the vice president made a big point of his item number three, which, as you say, was Iran agreeing to allow International Atomic Energy Agency inspectors into Iran, to be involved in overseeing whatever part of the nuclear programs Iran has, whatever is ultimately agreed.

And we do know that the head of the IAEA was up there in Burgenstock Hotel just behind me overnight, or yesterday overnight as well. So, he was available there.

I find the vice president's statement on that interesting. And it's interesting in part because, of course, item eight in the memorandum of understanding says that Iran had already agreed to the presence of those International Atomic Energy Agency inspectors, which is the document that President Trump and the Iranian president had already signed. So, there seemed to be agreement there.

I think reflecting on Lebanon, that was the key issue there for the Iranians coming in. The vice president really laid out some detailed language there about how they can avoid getting these escalations again. He sort of laid it on Hezbollah as attacking Israel. He called it chicken and egg, and I think very much if you're in Lebanon, you feel it's Israel that's attacking Hezbollah, and if you're in Israel, you feel it's Hezbollah that's attacking Israel that sort of triggers all of this.

Aside from that, he laid out this mechanism where it's possible for either side to sort of call in this de-confliction cell to find other ways of responding. And I think it would be widely agreed in the region there that that is a good stopgap measure to head off in the very short-term. The fundamentals, of course, that underpin the tensions there, the Lebanese army is not strong enough to push Hezbollah out as Israel wants. So, that's a fundamental issue that will sort of hang in the background and perhaps come back up again in the talks.

But the way that he laid out a new structure has been put in place. It's going to look at the nucleus, it's going to look at sanctions, there's going to be monitoring, there's going to be a recourse for, you know, checking if things go awry. That's significant.

I think he very much played down the push from the Iranian foreign minister that there's been the sanctions lifting, the unfreezing of assets, framing it as he did there, that this is good for the United States because it will have -- you know, be able to give a green light whether Iran's going to get that money. That money would be spent in the United States for the benefit of the Iranians. This seems to be, you know, a very positive way of putting that message out.

It's not how the Iranians see it, and I think that issue that he spoke about of the trash talk in the night and the misreporting, et cetera, about the position the Iranians have taken. But I and colleagues who have sources inside the building there last night were very clear, the Iranians were incredibly upset with what President Trump had said.

Now, whether that was theater to get the points across that they wanted to get across or not, but that dynamic played in heavily, and I think the president's able -- the vice president has tried to lay that to rest there.

BERMAN: All right. Nic Robertson for us in Lucerne this morning, monitoring the situation there, Vice President Vance on his way back to the United States. We'll wait and see if we hear from the Iranians or maybe other people who were in the room because the vice president's statements on this over the last week have sometimes been in a different place other sources here.

[07:20:00]

But progress seems to be made there, at least for now.

All right, breaking news, a political earthquake, the British prime minister announces his resignation. What happens next in this huge, big power shakeup?

A deadly raging fire burns up a popular tourist resort, leaving hundreds of visitors stranded.

And a Tesla slams into a home, killing a grandmother inside. The driver claims the car was in autopilot.

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BERMAN: All right. Breaking just a short time ago, British Prime Minister Keir Starmer announced he is resigning less than two years after he won the job.

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KEIR STARMER, BRITISH PRIME MINISTER: Every decision I've taken has been about putting the country I love first.

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That is why I will resign as leader of the Labor Party.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

BERMAN: All right. Major political upheaval for one of America's closest allies, and this paves the way for the sixth prime minister in just seven years. Let's get to CNN's Clare Sebastian outside 10 Downing Street for the latest on all this. I think a lot of people saw this coming. Still, a political earthquake.

CLARE SEBASTIAN, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Yes. This is still a major moment in British politics, John. We have, I have to say, gotten kind of used to seeing these podiums put out outside Number 10 over the last decade. If the new prime minister is installed quickly, that will be the seventh occupant of 10 Downing Street over the past decade.

Why, you might ask, can the U.K. not hold on to prime ministers? Well, there's a number of different reasons, but ten years ago this week, the U.K. voted to leave the European Union, and the turmoil that has followed, the economic turmoil, the political turmoil, certainly has contributed to some of this.

There's other economic reasons as well. The big surge in inflation that we saw after the pandemic and the war in Ukraine has really hurt people here, and they are looking for radical change.

Now, Keir Starmer swept to power in a landslide nearly two years ago promising that radical change. But most people here, well, certainly, most people around the country that we've spoken to and an increasing number of members of parliament in his party feel that he hasn't managed to deliver that. So, that has brought us to this moment.

As to what has happened next, well, Andy Burnham, who was up until very recently the mayor of Greater Manchester, he will now be sworn in as a member of parliament this afternoon. He is seen as the man best placed to replace Keir Starmer.

We don't know for sure yet whether or not anyone will challenge him. It's looking increasingly like they won't, so this could be over within a matter of weeks. But, unsurprisingly, he is coming in and promising stability, writing in a post this morning, the country expects stability, seriousness, and a continued focus on the issues that matter most, and that is what it will get.

Now, as for U.S. relations, Starmer had been seen as something of a Trump whisperer. He played a lot of sort of big cards early on, the second state visit, lots of sort of meetings and, you know, the famous moments in the Oval Office. But relations had deteriorated, the Iran war in particular being a bone of contention.

It's not clear how Andy Burnham, if he does become the next prime minister, will play this, but, certainly, perhaps he is even further to the left, so even further away from Trump on the political spectrum. John?

BERMAN: Yes. I mean, Andy Burnham will have so many issues internally. It'll be unclear even where Trump ranks necessarily in the top three, four, or five items on his list.

Clare Sebastian outside 10 Downing Street, getting a new occupant very soon, thank you very much. Sara? SIDNER: All right. Thank you, John. A deadly tornado look at this, huge, outbreaks tearing through the Midwest. We're tracking where the severe weather is headed next.

And stuck like this for hours. More than a dozen children stuck dangling from an amusement park ride. How they were rescued. Good grief.

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