When he supported the 2024 presidential offer of Donald Trump, then Sen. JD Vance framed his support around a simple idea: Trump had not started wars in his first term.
Now that he serves as his vice president, Vance is being called to make a more complicated case in defense of Trump’s decision on Saturday of launching bombs in nuclear enrichment sites in Iran.
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Vance was next to Trump in the White House situation room during the strikes, and in the televised speech to announce them. And the next morning, he appeared in two Sunday news programs to respond to the direct fall of the United States in a conflict between Israel and Iran.
The United States, Vance, said NBC News in “Meet The Press”, was not at war with Iran, but rather with Iran’s nuclear weapons program. The diplomacy, Vance added, “was never given a real opportunity for the Iranians.” And in “This Week” by ABC, Vance argued that Trump’s statement that Iran’s nuclear abilities had been “completely erased” was not significantly different from a more domesticated characterization in the New York Times that the program had been “severely damaged.”
On Vance Sales, amplified together with the Secretary of State of Marco Rubio, by the White House Quick Response Team in a current of clips published on social networks, it was not out of line with some of its most aggressive statements about Iran. But their TV appearances were also destined to reassure others who, such as Vance, have been widely skeptical or opposite to foreign intervention.
“I certainly empathize with Americans who are exhausted after 25 years of foreign tangles in the Middle East,” said Vance in “Meet the press.” “I understand the concern, but the difference is that at that time, we had silly presidents, and now we have a president who really knows how to achieve the national security objectives of the United States.”
A clash with Iran, Vance added, “it will not be something long and prolonged. We have entered, we have done the work of delaying its nuclear program. Now we are going to work to permanently disassemble that nuclear program in the coming years, and that is what the president has proposed to do. Simple principle: Iran cannot have a nuclear weapon.”
Vance “was selected to be partially vice president for situations exactly how it is,” said a person close to Trump’s team who was granted anonymity to share internal thinking.
“The president has full confidence in his ability to effectively communicate the message of the administration, especially in hostile territory, in a way that can unite his coalition, instead of dividing it,” added this person.
A divided coalition has been a concern within Trump’s world since Israel launched air attacks against Iran last week, which caused reprisals from Iran, and fears that the United States will soon get involved more directly in the conflict.
Many influential figures in Trump’s Maga Movement, from former Trump Steve Bannon advisor to the young right-wing activist Charlie Kirk, have strong isolationist views or anti-intervention and popular platforms from which to share them.
Vance himself has been a Lanzas Council for such positions, which he articulated in the guest column of January 2023 that he wrote to support Trump in the Wall Street Journal. Several people in Trump’s orbit have cited that support, which arrived at a low moment in Trump’s 2024 campaign, such as a key construction block in a relationship that became the vice presidency.
“In the four years in the position of Mr. Trump, wars did not start despite the enormous pressure of his own party and even members of his own administration,” Vance wrote in the column, which appeared online under the headline “Trump’s best foreign policy? Not beginning any war.”
“Not starting wars is perhaps a low bar, but that is a reflection of the fast of Trump’s predecessors and the establishment of foreign policy that followed shamefully,” added Vance.
That worldview, held by Vance and others, was at that particularly powerful moment given the opposition of the extreme right to the US intervention in the Russian war against Ukraine. But those close to Vance point out that over time has applied a more nuanced thought towards Iran.
Speaking last year in a program organized by Morgan Ortago, an agent of foreign policy that has served Trump as a special presidential envoy for the Middle East, Vance requested an “aggressive” approach to ensure that Iran will not develop or deploy a nuclear weapon.
“And if God does not want it, they get there, then I think he must be willing to take some extreme steps, if they are going to be effective, to ensure that they do not have a broader nuclear capacity, that they cannot launch nuclear missiles throughout the Middle East or even worldwide,” Vance said in the interview. “I think we have to be aggressive with this, and I get to this from a position of a certain restriction in foreign policy. I think that war often leads to involuntary consequences, but prevents I will get a bomb, very, very important.”
In a Fox News interview during the National Republican Convention last year, Vance retained the Trump first period drones that killed the Iranian military leader Qassem Soleimani as an example of smart leadership.
“Many people recognize that we need to do something with Iran, but not with these small weak bombing races,” Vance told the host Sean Hannity. “If you’re going to hit the Iranians, you hit them strongly. And that’s what he did when he took Soleimani.”
More recently, at the Munich leaders conference last month in Washington, Vance described Iran’s nuclear program as a turning point.
“We really think that if Domino Iran falls, you will see nuclear proliferation throughout the Middle East,” Vance said. “That is very bad for us. It is very bad for our friends. And it is something that we do not believe it can happen.”
Last week, as the anticipation of US intervention grew, Vance used his X personal account to issue a preventive defense of 374 words of what Trump could decide to do with Iran.
The president, Vance wrote, “some confidence has been gained in this issue. And after having seen this close and I can assure you that you are only interested in using the US army to achieve the objectives of the US people. Whatever it does, that is their approach.”
