Vice President J.D. Vance and Secretary of State Marco Rubio appeared on Sunday morning talk shows to defend the U.S attack on Iran carried out the night before.

“We’re not at war with Iran,” Vance said on NBC News’s Meet the Press. “We’re at war with Iran’s nuclear program.” 

Vance, widely regarded as the administration’s leading voice for U.S. foreign policy restraint, could see his credibility undermined by a U.S.–Iran war. He portrayed America’s attack, which involved bombings and missile strikes on three Iranian nuclear facilities, as a necessary and limited action. But he also added that "we're going to now work to permanently dismantle that nuclear program over the coming years."

Vance said that the operation had “substantially delayed [Iran’s] development of a nuclear weapon,” though he declined to say whether the bombarded nuclear sites had been destroyed. While Iran has enriched uranium to near weapons-grade levels, U.S. intelligence assessments indicate that Tehran has not made a decision to build a nuclear weapon.

On Fox News’ Sunday Morning Futures, Rubio similarly maintained that “this is not a war against Iran.”

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Washington and Tehran had been trying to reach a nuclear deal that would limit uranium enrichment on Iranian soil in exchange for the U.S. lifting sanctions. Both Vance and Rubio expressed the view that Tehran hadn’t negotiated in good faith. “They played us,” Rubio said. “They tried to play us, I should say.”

Diplomacy had seemed to be going well until the U.S. hardened its demands by insisting on a ban, rather than limits, on Iran’s domestic enrichment. Tehran says that its right to enrich uranium is non-negotiable.

Editor's note: This article has been updated with additional comments from Vice President Vance from near the end of the NBC News interview.