Vance speaks about Iran conflict, new fund in press briefing

· UPI

May 19 (UPI) -- Vice President JD Vance took questions from reporters Tuesday at a White House press briefing

, reiterating President Donald Trump's repeated assertion that the conflict in Iran is meant to keep the country from developing a nuclear weapon but that it is "not a forever war."

"We want to keep the number of countries that have nuclear weapons small, and that's why Iran cannot have a nuclear weapon," he said during the briefing, "on top of all the other things that we might be worried about, that they themselves could use it, that they could use it in leverage and economic control or economic negotiations."

Vance was the second person, following U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio, to stand in for White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt, who is on maternity leave.

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Iran was a dominant topic of the briefing. Vance said the United States has made progress in negotiations despite Iran's position being "fractured," but that U.S. forces are ready to attack again if necessary.

"We're going to take care of business and come home," he said.

Rubio and Vance are both considered presidential candidate contenders for Republicans in 2028, but the vice president demurred at a question

suggesting the press briefing role could be a sort of audition for candidacy.

"I'm a vice president," he said. "I really like my job, and I'm going to try to do as good a job as I can."

Vance also dealt with questions about the Justice Department's new $1.776 billion "anti-weaponization fund," which was created to compensate those who say they were unfairly targeted by former presidential administrations.

Some officials have criticized the fund as a way for the government to pay Trump allies who say they were targeted during the Biden administration. Earlier Tuesday, acting Attorney General Todd Blanche said he could not rule out payments to convicted Jan. 6 rioters.

"We're not trying to give money to anybody who attacked apolice officer," Vance said at the briefing. "We're trying to compensate people where the book was thrown at them, they were mistreated by the legal system."