US Vice-President JD Vance is sceptical of US military operations overseas. Photo / Oliver Contreras, AFP
Vice-President JD Vance is projecting loyalty to Donald Trump as the President leads the United States into the type of war the Iraq veteran didn’t want - and as the new conflict complicates Vance’s political future.
Vance allies have played down the impact the operation in Iran could have on his presidential ambitions, insisting that a mission involving the US military only for a matter of weeks won’t stay in voters’ memories.
People close to the Vice-President have also conceded to the Washington Post, however, that a months-long conflict will pose a problem for whoever is the next Republican nominee.
The people spoke on the condition of anonymity to comment on private discussions.
The war has put Vance in an increasingly difficult bind.
Once a stalwart critic of America’s costly military interventions overseas, the 41-year-old Marine veteran has found himself defending the US President’s growing appetite for military action while managing the fallout in a coalition that includes ardent war sceptics. He told the Post last month he still considers himself a “sceptic of foreign military interventions”.
The trickiness of his situation was highlighted last week with the resignation of Joe Kent, a senior White House official who quit over the war and publicly criticised Trump.
During a private meeting, Vance tried to persuade Kent to not make his departure a public feud. It didn’t work.
While the political impact of the war could be significant, Vance has maintained in recent private conversations that he hasn’t yet decided whether he will seek the presidential nomination for 2028, according to two people who have recently discussed the matter with him.
One of those people cited Vance’s fourth child, due this summer, and said the Vice-President has put a priority on his family life and is unlikely to make a final decision until he and Usha Vance see how another baby affects their lives.
If the US involvement in the war goes on for months, say some people close to Vance, it will have a major impact and the next GOP presidential nominee, whoever it ends up being, will have to explain the war’s rationale to voters in the 2028 election.
Vance has avoided public criticism of the war as 13 US troops have lost their lives and as Administration officials have offered conflicting accounts of why Trump decided to get involved in Iran, what the President believes he will achieve and how long the US will remain involved.
“Whatever your view is, when the President of the United States makes a decision, it’s your job to help make that decision as effective and successful as possible,” Vance said when asked about the resignation of Kent, the US Government’s top counter-terrorism official, whom Vance added that he likes.
It’s “fine to disagree” with Trump as long as officials still work to support the President’s decisions, Vance said.
“That’s how I do my job,” the Vice-President said. “And I think that’s how everybody in the Administration should do their job, too.”
During their meeting at the White House, Kent gave Vance a copy of a resignation letter blasting the President’s decision to launch the war, saying that Iran posed “no imminent threat” and that Trump had been sucked into the conflict “due to pressure from Israel and its powerful American lobby”.
Vance told Kent, who was joined in the meeting by his boss, Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard, to “go quietly” and not make it a “big thing”, said a US official with knowledge of the meeting.
It was an example of how Vance has privately entertained criticisms of the conflict and acknowledged it is not popular among war sceptics but has made a point to avoid public rebuke of Trump’s decisions.
Another official said Vance encouraged Kent to speak with Trump and White House Chief of Staff Susie Wiles before making a final decision and “encouraged him to be respectful to the President”.
Instead, Kent published his 400-word resignation letter online the next morning, accusing the President of abandoning the principles he ran on and robbing the US “of the precious lives of our patriots” and “the wealth and prosperity of our nation”.
The meeting brought together three figures - Vance, Kent and Gabbard - who each built their political identities, at least in part, on challenging the bipartisan consensus that led to the post-9/11 wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.
That shared scepticism has taken a back seat to Trump’s enthusiasm for military action, including the bombings of Yemen, Somalia, Syria, Nigeria, Venezuela and Iran, the seizure of Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro and the assassination of Iran’s Supreme Leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei.
While Kent could no longer stifle his disapproval, Gabbard issued a carefully worded statement that did not mention Kent or endorse the war in Iran but acknowledged Trump’s prerogatives as the duly elected leader of the country.
Vance, who has made a point to repeatedly acknowledge the military lives lost during the ongoing war, has sought to defend the President’s hawkish turn.
“The Iranian regime’s nuclear ambitions unquestionably endangered the US, and President Trump’s leadership is making our country stronger and safer,” a Vance spokesman told the Post.
The Vice-President in recent years, though, has said he was opposed to entering a war with Iran, including while on the campaign trail as Trump’s running mate.
“Our interest, I think very much, is in not going to war with Iran,” Vance said in an October 2024 podcast. Doing so, he said then, “would be a huge distraction of resources” and “massively expensive to our country”.
Advisers to Vance said that despite being in a different location from Trump when the strikes began on February 28 - working with Gabbard from the Situation Room in Washington while Trump was in Florida - he was deeply involved in the behind-the-scenes deliberations ahead of the Iran incursion.
The decision to keep the President and Vice-President in separate locations was based on security protocols, Vance aides said.
Preventing US troop casualties has long been Vance’s top concern with regard to foreign conflict, people close to him have privately said, and when it became clear that the President was going to take action against Iran, Vance’s focus quickly became limiting those casualties.
As Trump weighed whether to carry out multiple operations in Iran in the lead-up to a larger one, the Vice-President advocated operating quickly, to go in and efficiently complete the operation and get the US military out, people familiar with his thinking have told the Post.
The Vice-President, aware of Trump’s evolving answers to questions about the goals and expected duration of the conflict in Iran, has been careful not to get ahead of the President when answering questions.
While taking questions from reporters in Michigan in front of a crowd of supporters, Vance acknowledged that the conflict is posing some issues domestically. He took questions about rising fuel prices and what the Administration was doing to bring them down, and about how the federal Government will stop domestic terror threats as a result of the war.
“We’ve got a problem, we know we have a problem and we’re doing everything we can to address it,” Vance said of petrol prices.
“We’ve got a rough road ahead of us for the next few weeks, but it’s temporary.”
Sign up to Herald Premium Editor’s Picks, delivered straight to your inbox every Friday. Editor-in-Chief Murray Kirkness picks the week’s best features, interviews and investigations. Sign up for Herald Premium here.