Vice President JD Vance’s role in promoting a war in Iran is, on the one hand, an uncomfortable position for an Iraq War veteran who rose to political prominence as an anti-interventionist.
President Donald Trump’s failure to start wars during his first term underpinned Vance’s initial support for him in his 2024 White House bid. And an old Merle Haggard song, complete with the lyrics “Let’s get out of Iraq and get back on track,” played as Vance arrived for the second night of that year’s Republican National Convention in Milwaukee.
But Vance has also consistently maintained a tougher stance on Iran, saying the United States must be prepared to prevent it from developing or deploying nuclear weapons. And while Trump and members of his administration have offered various justifications for starting a war without congressional approval, Vance has focused narrowly on Iran’s nuclear capabilities.
“What the president determined is that he didn’t want to just … keep the country safe from an Iranian nuclear weapon for the first three or four years of his second term. He wanted to make sure that Iran could never get a nuclear weapon, and that would require, fundamentally, a change of mind on the part of the Iranian regime,” Vance said Monday night in an interview on Fox News.
“Then he saw that the Iranian regime was weakened, he knew that they were committed to reaching the brink of a nuclear weapon and he decided to take action because he felt it was necessary to protect the security of the nation,” he added.
Vance reinforced the message that same night in an X post that included a clip of the interview.
“President Trump will not drag the United States into a years-long conflict without a clear objective,” he wrote. “Iran can never be allowed to obtain a nuclear weapon. That is the goal of this operation and President Trump will carry it out to completion.”
Behind the scenes, in the days before the war, Vance made his reservations about kinetic action in Iran known, a person familiar with his thinking told NBC News. Once it became clear that the decision to engage militarily had been made, Vance shifted his focus to limiting casualties and advocated acting quickly on an attack, fearing that the longer the United States waited, the more likely the plans would be leaked to the media, making it more likely that Iran would preemptively attack American troops in the Middle East.
So far, six U.S. service members have been killed in the operation, which Trump said could last four or five weeks, or longer.
The war and his obligations as Trump’s vice president to defend it could complicate Vance’s political future in a Republican Party that has less appetite for foreign intervention than during the days of President George W. Bush’s wars in Afghanistan and Iraq. Vance is seen as a possible presidential candidate in 2028, when Trump is term-limited.
Vance’s public message has in some cases reflected statements he has made since before his debut as Trump’s running mate more than 18 months ago. Speaking with Fox News’ Sean Hannity at the Republican convention, Vance highlighted Trump’s first-term drone strike that killed Iranian military leader Qassem Soleimani as an example of smart leadership.
“A lot of people recognize that we have to do something with Iran, but not with these small, weak bombings,” Vance said. “If you’re going to hit the Iranians, hit it hard. And that’s what he did when he took out Soleimani.”
Days earlier, on a show hosted by Morgan Ortagus, a foreign policy operative who served Trump as special deputy presidential envoy for the Middle East, Vance acknowledged his reputation for advocating “moderation in foreign policy.” But he also called for an “aggressive” approach to quell Iran’s nuclear capabilities.
“I think war often has unintended consequences, but preventing Iran from getting a bomb is really important,” Vance said.
Vance sounded more subdued in the days leading up to the 2024 election, when comedian and podcast host Tim Dillon asked him how a new Trump administration would handle a potentially “massive war in the Middle East.”
“Obviously, Israel has the right to defend itself, but the interests of the United States will sometimes be different,” Vance responded. “Sometimes we’re going to have overlapping interests and sometimes we’re going to have different interests. And I think our interest is not to go to war with Iran, right? It would be a huge distraction of resources. It would be enormously costly for our country.”
But Vance also emphasized his concern about Iran’s nuclear program.
“I don’t want Iran to get a nuclear weapon, and I think we should strongly encourage the Iranians and use all the influence we have to encourage them not to get a nuclear weapon,” he told Dillon.
Laying out his thinking, Vance added: “I’m not saying let’s go into the Middle East and start a war here, but, we recognize, okay, the Israelis (and) the Arab Gulf states don’t like Iran, so let’s let the Israelis and the Arab Gulf states provide the counterweight to Iran. The United States doesn’t have to constantly police every region of the world.”
Still, after becoming vice president, Vance, speaking last year at the Munich Leaders Conference in Washington, described Iran’s nuclear program as a turning point.
“We really believe that if the Iran domino falls, we will see nuclear proliferation throughout the Middle East,” he said. “That’s very bad for us. It’s very bad for our friends. And it’s something we don’t believe can happen.”
The following month, Trump ordered airstrikes on nuclear enrichment sites in Iran.
“We are not at war with Iran,” Vance said in an interview the next day on NBC News’ “Meet the Press.” “We are at war with Iran’s nuclear program.”
In the same interview, Vance attempted to reassure those, like him, who might be skeptical of such forays into the Middle East.
“I certainly empathize with Americans who are exhausted after 25 years of foreign entanglements in the Middle East,” he said. “I understand the concern, but the difference is that back then we had dumb presidents and now we have a president who really knows how to achieve America’s national security goals.”
Vance has also since expressed his belief that any military intervention in Iran will be short-term.
“The idea that we’re going to be in a war in the Middle East for years with no end in sight… there’s no chance of that happening,” he said in an interview with The Washington Post last week, less than two days before the war began.
Vance reiterated that belief Monday night on Fox News. When asked by host Jesse Watters about the parallels to the long and costly wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, Vance asserted that Trump had a clearer mission than his predecessors.
“I said this before the conflict began, I’ll say it again: There is simply no way Donald Trump would allow this country to enter a multi-year conflict with no clear end in sight and no clear goal,” he said.
“What’s different about President Trump, and it’s frankly different about both Republicans and Democrats of the past, is that he’s not going to allow his country to go to war unless there’s a clearly defined goal. He’s defined that goal: Iran can’t have a nuclear weapon and it has to make a long-term commitment to never try to rebuild nuclear capability. It’s pretty clear. It’s pretty simple. And I think that means we’re not going to get into the problems that we’ve had with Iraq.” and Afghanistan.”
