‘it’s A Vulnerability’: Vance Makes A Political Gamble With Public-facing Iran Role

Vice President JD Vance spent the week making a series of high-profile appearances promoting a fragile peace agreement with Iran — and he's set to head to Switzerland as soon as this weekend to lead negotiations himself.

It is one of the highest-stakes gambles of his political career.

Vance is generating a robust trail of media content as part of his peace agreement tour — cable news appearances, an on-camera briefing at the White House on Thursday and possible photos of the vice president with Iranian negotiators, such as Iranian Parliament Speaker Mohammad-Bagher Ghalibaf, at a mountain resort overlooking Lake Lucerne.

If things go well this weekend and in the weeks to follow, Vance will have played a key role in brokering a peace that could lead to an end to Iran’s nuclear ambitions and clears the way for the economy to quickly rebound. But if things go poorly, Vance, a presumed top contender for the 2028 nomination, will have defended an unpopular war and been the public face of a short-lived peace.

“It’s a vulnerability, but it is what it is. He’s the very public face of this,” said one outside Vance ally, who like others in this report was granted anonymity to speak candidly. “His political enemies are trying to make it a binary for him: ‘If one single Israeli dies, it’s because of JD Vance.’ But I do think it will have to be navigated.”

Some of the vice president’s outside allies describe the role he is taking with the peace agreement as the best among poor options for the vice president, who was initially skeptical of the strikes against Iran and also has the most politically to lose if the U.S. becomes mired in another forever war.

“We're clearly worried that we’re gonna wear the stain of a war that we didn't support in the first place,” a second outside Vance ally added. “That's a problem.”

A slice of the GOP already hates the deal, upset that it doesn’t accomplish more, and another slice is angry the war happened in the first place, revealing the difficult political needle the vice president has been trying to thread. But there are unquestionable political upsides to the war ending, gas prices falling and the White House have more bandwidth to focus on domestic concerns.

"The ship has to be righted politically by December, so his launch and run feels positive and has a chance. He’s betting that in 12 months people would rather have a humming economy and won’t really care any more about the Iran minutiae, which is probably correct, and is comfortable being attacked from the right on this issue, including by Democrats,” said a former Trump official. “Yes, he also probably believes more strongly ideologically in settling and getting out, but he doesn’t have a choice."

The vice president told reporters Thursday that he plans to lead the U.S. team as the two countries negotiate the finer points of the deal. He said he expects to leave this weekend to begin the talks.

Both Trump and Vance have framed the agreement as a series of carrots and sticks. If Iran cooperates, it gets certain concessions from the U.S. and desperately needed economic benefits; if it doesn’t, as the president has said, the U.S. will “go right back to dropping bombs right smack in the middle of their head.”

“We don’t trust words, we trust action, we trust conduct,” Vance said Thursday.

Others in Vance world argue the public role the vice president is taking is a feature not a bug, hoping to associate him with playing a key role in ending an unpopular war. They see it as inoculating a political liability that otherwise would have hung over Vance, and many of his allies took a victory lap on social media on Thursday, declaring that Vance’s fiercest GOP critics were doing the work for him.

“If you want to be the presidential nominee of the Republican Party and the next Republican president, you need to be aligned as closely as possible with President Trump and what President Trump valued as his agenda and his achievements and his objectives,” said Alex Gray, who served in a senior role at the National Security Council in Trump's first term. “It’s hard for me to think of something that is more consequential than ending the conflict the president has said he wants to see end.”

A person close to the White House pushed back on the idea that there is any risk in Vance’s public-facing engagement on the Iran peace agreement.

"It's not a gamble to engage in this peace process, it's a fantastic opportunity for the President and the Vice President alike,” the person said. “Thanks to the [memorandum of understanding], the United States is on the cusp of ushering in a new chapter of peace for the Middle East, while keeping all of the cards if Iran doesn't hold up its end of the bargain. The entire negotiating team is focused on verifiable results, not politics."

White House spokesperson Olivia Wales, in a statement, described Vance as the president’s “right-hand man” and “an invaluable member of the President’s talented national security team,” naming him alongside special envoy Steve Witkoff and Jared Kushner as those the president trusted to negotiate an Iran deal.

“What President Trump and his team achieved on the battlefield and at the negotiating table is nothing short of remarkable and will strengthen American security for years to come,” she said. “Everyone is fully behind President Trump’s efforts to ensure Iran can never possess a nuclear weapon.”

Still, Trump was angry with Vance last summer for not echoing the president’s statement that Iran’s nuclear facilities had been “totally obliterated” after the first round of U.S. strikes, according to an excerpt from the upcoming book “Regime Change: Inside the Imperial Presidency of Donald Trump” by Maggie Haberman and Jonathan Swan obtained by POLITICO.

Despite Vance’s reservations about intervention in the Middle East, he quickly came on board the president’s position as the White House undertook a second round of strikes on Iran in February. Vance “very much wanted to go to Islamabad” for the attempt at peace talks in April, a senior White House official said at the time. The vice president’s relationship with the Pakistani field marshal has been credited as playing a key role in negotiations.

A Republican close to the White House said that the risk to both Trump and Vance was allowing the war to continue and destroying the economy in the process.

“The entire political apparatus around the president and virtually all the senior members of his team inside the administration were all largely aligned on ending this war," the Republican said. "Interestingly, from the most hawkish to the most dovish, there were no major players inside the administration who attempted to stop or torpedo the deal. There was broad agreement that it was time to move on.”

Yet the president himself has appeared to acknowledge that the jury is still out on the peace agreement, joking about the front-facing role Vance is taking with it.

“If [the Iran deal] works out, I'm going to take the credit. If it doesn't work out, I'm blaming JD. You better be careful, JD,” Trump told reporters at the G7 summit on Wednesday. “He’s gonna turn his plane around and get the hell out of here. Yeah, I like that idea. I think it’s a good idea.”

Vance’s potential 2028 presidential bid raises the political stakes even higher. Vance, in his posture on the Iran war, has run into a quagmire that has befelled many of his predecessors: Any successes are attributed to the president; any failures the vice president is forced to own, as in the case of former Vice President Kamala Harris as border czar.

One person close to the vice president’s team noted that Vance has been able to play the role of “good, loyal vice president” despite his reservations about the war. But the person added, “If this thing in Iran goes great, I don’t think he gets some huge upside. If he blows this thing I don’t think he has huge downsides.”

A second person close to the White House noted that Vance’s fortunes “are all about President Trump’s successes.”

“Peace and prosperity decides elections,” the person quipped. “Already seeing below $4 gas.”

There’s plenty that could go wrong between now and then. Israel has continued to launch strikes on Lebanon since the peace agreement was announced on Sunday, Iran is threatening to impose new fees on oil shipping through the Strait of Hormuz, potentially making passage more costly than before the war began — and, to top it off, the end to the war may be coming too late to save Republicans in the midterms.

“The vice president will get credit,” a third person close to the White House added. “Whether that’s good or bad remains to be seen.”

Adam Wren contributed to this report.