Vance says Iran would be “first domino” in race by countries to get nuclear weapons

Vice President JD Vance resurrected the Cold War-era “domino theory” to justify the war, saying that a failure to stop Iran’s nuclear ambitions would lead to other countries pursuing atomic weapons.

“If you have every country in the world scrambling to try to get a nuclear weapon, it would make us all much less safe,” Vance told reporters at the White House briefing. “And Iran would really be the first domino.”

During the Cold War with the Soviet Union, U.S. policymakers argued that if a country went communist, it could cause neighboring nations to fall like dominoes into communism as well.

This led to efforts to contain the spread of communism and resulted in American interventions in Vietnam and other nations.