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United States Vice President JD Vance has said that convicted child sex offender and billionaire financier Jeffrey Epstein could have had connections to Mossad or the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), as he “clearly had connections” to both American and Israeli intelligence.

Vance addressed several topics during an interview on The Joe Rogan Experience podcast, including Jeffrey Epstein, the Epstein Files release and an alleged Israeli campaign against the US-Iran talks.

When podcast host Rogan asked Vance about the American financier, he claimed to have “some theories.” Rogan suggested one such theory that Epstein was working for Mossad, the Israeli national intelligence agency.

“Yeah, Mossad or CIA,” Vance replied. “Or some other deep state, whether in America or Israel or another country or both.”

According to Vance, Epstein clearly had connections to the highest levels of American and Israeli intelligence. However, he said that the “Epstein saga” revealed that the convicted child sex offender was more connected to the Israeli Leftist-Centre rather than rightist Israeli politics.

“It wasn’t like he (Epstein) was super connected to the right-centre of Israeli politics,” said the US Vice President.

‘We are guilty of mishandling Epstein files’

He admitted that the Donald Trump-led government was guilty of making errors with the release of Epstein files. “If people want to say we mishandled the Epstein release, guilty. We did mishandle it, especially the communications of it.”

When asked what should’ve been done instead, Vance’s answer was convenient: “I think we should’ve just dropped everything at the very beginning, and it obviously takes a little time to review and find this stuff and redact things, but we should’ve just done it as quickly as possible.”

Rogan pointed out that some of the redacted pieces of information were not just victims. “My understanding of this, having looked at most but not all of it (the Epstein files), is that it is sometimes hard to draw a distinction between victim and co-conspirator,” Vance replied.

“I’ll go to my deathbed believing there’s a story there, but I can’t prove it,” he said, promising that there is no hidden document that allows the administration to prove exactly what was going on.

‘Israel spent a fortune to derail the Iran talks’

In another segment of the podcast, Vance claimed that Israel had spent enormous sums of money to derail and blow up the Iran negotiations and smear anyone pursuing a deal.

“I definitely think you have seen this very discreet, extremely well-funded campaign to try to derail the negotiations and try to derail the deal,” he said.

He then cited a “worth reading” Time magazine article that listed “a bunch of people who were paid by a former Trump campaign person who was himself paid by certain elements within the Israeli government.” These paid individuals reportedly abused him online, demanding he halt the talks with Iran and pressuring him to continue the military campaign indefinitely.

Vance said that there was a “literal foreign influence campaign being funded to tank the very deal” that he was pursuing. Several elements of the Israeli government are manipulating and trying to change the American public opinion to keep the war going, he said. “Again, not towards any objective, but just indefinitely,” he clarified.

‘US no longer in business of changing regime’

On Iran, the US Vice President said Washington was no longer in the business of helping another country’s people change their government.

If the Iranian people want to rise up and change their government, that’s up to them, he said. “But we’re not going to send 150,000 ground troops in order to accomplish a change in a regime unless the people on the ground themselves want to accomplish that outcome.”

He claimed that the US will not be sending troops regardless, and to propose doing so is “basically saying that the US military should do the job for the Iranian people.”

“We are not in that business anymore. We’re just not.”