We have investigated the interlayer exchange coupling (IEC) in Fe/MgO/Fe(0 0 1) tunnel junctions with and without oxygen vacancies in MgO, using model and density functional calculations. The model predicts that IEC changes sign from ferromagnetic to antiferromagnetic if a defect level matches the Fermi energy. Ab initio calculations show that for perfect junctions, IEC is ferromagnetic and decreases exponentially with MgO thickness. Oxygen vacancies placed in the middle of MgO make IEC antiferromagnetic for three monolayers (MLs) of MgO, but do not change the sign of IEC for five MLs. The latter fact is explained within the model, which suggests that for the impurity level lying below the Fermi energy IEC can change sign with increasing barrier thickness due to the weaker coupling of the impurity level to the ferromagnets.