Trump Iran strikes expose JD Vance split with Maga anti-war base

US President Donald Trump oversees "Operation Epic Fury" with Central Intelligence Agency Director John Ratcliffe, US Secretary of State Marco Rubio and White House Chief of Staff Susie Wiles at Mar-a-Lago. Photo / Getty Images

On the night that Donald Trump decided to launch strikes against Iran, he was huddled with his top team in Mar-a-Lago.

There was Marco Rubio, the Secretary of State; Dan Caine, the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff; and Susie Wiles, the President’s ever-present chief of staff.

But JD Vance was not in earshot. Instead, the Vice-President appeared at the head of a “B” team, monitoring events from the White House situation room.

He was joined there by Tulsi Gabbard, the Director of National Intelligence. Like Vance, she has a long track record of opposing foreign interventionism – and drew the President’s fury by stating, in July last year, that there was no evidence Iran was building a nuclear bomb.

The administration has not provided an explanation for why the team was split. The two sides were connected by a secure phone line. But it does not require a particularly overactive imagination to wonder whether the physical divide underlined differences of opinion on the renewal of America’s on-again, off-again efforts at remaking the Middle East.

To be sure, Vance would never have imagined himself at the head of the Situation Room table as the US launched a huge military operation against Iran.

In 2023, he endorsed Trump for the White House in an article for the Wall Street Journal that argued his “best foreign policy” was “not starting any wars”. The old school of Washingtonian statesmanship had failed, he argued, leading to “world-historic catastrophes in the Middle East”. In its place, Vance called for “a different kind of statesmanship: one that stands athwart the crowd” and only acts with “great restraint”.

The vice-president has softened his stance somewhat inside the White House. Today, he backs the President’s blitzkrieg-style of warfare: in and out within hours, as demonstrated by the operation to capture Nicolas Maduro, the former Venezuelan president. In the days before the first strikes on Iran, he told the Washington Post there was “no chance” the US would become involved in a protracted conflict, and that he believed Trump could still be called a “sceptic of foreign military interventions”.

There were reports of tension in the Situation Room in the week before the war began. According to the New York Times, Vance pressed John Ratcliffe, the CIA director, and Caine for more information on the risks and complexity of a strike on Iran – diverging from the President’s wish not to be seen as “weak”.

To this day, Vance represents the more isolationist wing of the Maga movement. Marjorie Taylor Greene, the former congresswoman, is among those now questioning whether Trump has lost sight of his “America first” principles. Tucker Carlson, an ally of Vance, has called the war in Iran “evil”.

Evidently, the President has not morphed into Dick Cheney overnight. At the weekend, he said he was already holding talks with Iran over a potential ceasefire, days after urging the country’s population to overthrow the regime once America had “finished” its strikes. Israeli media reported that the regime had rejected any overtures of peace.

But Vance may want to flag his scepticism subtly, without appearing disloyal, before the next steps in his political career. Early polling suggests only a quarter of Americans support the strikes that killed Ayatollah Ali Khamenei. The Vice-President has not posted since the operation on his personal X account, where he often hits out on the issues of the day.

Laura Loomer, the hard-Right influencer close to Trump, described his silence as “telling”.

Benjamin Friedman, policy director at the Washington-based think tank Defence Priorities, said “it will be difficult for Vance to say he didn’t agree with this” when he makes his expected run for the White House in 2028.

“But I think he wants to not be seen as a leading cheerleader for it, so the people on the kind of anti-war Right don’t abandon him as their candidate.”

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