In 2023, Senator JD Vance of Ohio wrote a piece in The Wall Street Journal explaining why he backed a second term for Donald J. Trump. “He has my support because I know he won’t recklessly send Americans to fight wars overseas,” Mr. Vance wrote.
Three years, an election and six American lives lost later, Mr. Vance, now vice president, is publicly endorsing a military intervention in Iran that he initially had cautioned the president and his advisers against.
Once it became clear to Mr. Vance that Mr. Trump was going to launch strikes, the vice president pushed for moving quickly to minimize casualties, avert leaks to the news media, and prevent Iran from preemptively attacking troops in the Middle East, according to a person familiar with Mr. Vance’s thinking who was not authorized to speak publicly.
His caution about igniting a conflict in the Middle East was a rare instance of Mr. Vance, who never publicly allows daylight between him and Mr. Trump, initially staking out a position during internal debates at odds with where his boss ended up.
His careful positioning since then reflects the delicate politics of the moment, with Mr. Trump all in on a conflict that is expanding without a clear end game, and with influential voices on the right angry that the president abandoned an anti-intervention stance that Mr. Vance had vocally championed.
As anti-intervention figures in the MAGA movement grew increasingly outspoken in their criticism of the White House, Mr. Vance appeared on Fox News on Monday evening and told a host that Mr. Trump’s decision to strike Iran would be nothing like the past quagmires in Iraq and Afghanistan. He then emphasized that the president could go “a lot longer” if he felt the need to.
“I think the president just wants to make it clear to the Iranians and to the world that he is not going to rest until he accomplishes that all-important objective of ensuring that Iran can’t have a nuclear weapon,” Mr. Vance said.
The vice president already has a reputation as a political chameleon, not least because he serves at the side of a president he once likened to Hitler. His latest public comments on Iran were at odds with the anti-interventionist policies that helped define his identity as he rose in the Republican Party. Mr. Trump and Mr. Vance now seem to have little claim to being the “pro-peace ticket” they championed as candidates in 2024.
“I do think a challenge in the messaging is a campaign promise that was the exact opposite,” said Marc Short, the former chief of staff to Vice President Mike Pence. “I’m applauding the action, but I am not surprised that the public reaction is mixed, because I don’t think they’re prepared for this.”
As a likely candidate in 2028 to succeed Mr. Trump, Mr. Vance faces the challenge of holding together the electoral coalition that propelled them to victory in 2024, one whose loudest voices were deeply committed to the idea of “America First,” including a passionate belief that presidents of both parties had been too quick to expend American blood and treasure on foreign wars.
Mr. Vance was always among the leading voices of that philosophy, in contrast to Marco Rubio, who before becoming Mr. Trump’s secretary of state and national security adviser had a history of being more open to projecting American power.
Faced with Mr. Trump’s decision to wage war against Iran, Mr. Vance is now centering his support on the need for Tehran not to have a nuclear weapon, as he indicated in his Monday interview on Fox News. On this much, he has been consistent: At the Munich Leaders Meeting in Washington last May, he told the audience that Mr. Trump had several options, including diplomacy, when it came to dealing with Iran.
Mr. Vance said that striking Iran would be “very bad for everybody, and it’s not what we want, but it’s better than Option C, which is Iran getting a nuclear weapon.”
But in the days and hours before Mr. Trump authorized a strike on Iran over the weekend, Mr. Vance had made his opposition known during internal deliberations, according to a person familiar with his thinking who was not authorized to talk publicly.
Mr. Vance’s allies say he has always been clear about doing what is necessary to stop the Iranians from developing a bomb. “He has said on multiple occasions over multiple years that we should go very far to prevent the Iranians from developing nuclear weapons,” said John Ashbrook, a Republican strategist and podcaster.
Mr. Vance’s office did not dispute that he was initially opposed to the strike.
“The vice president keeps his counsel to the president private,” Taylor Van Kirk, Mr. Vance’s press secretary, said in a text message.
Another ally of Mr. Vance’s, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to relay the vice president’s thinking, said that Mr. Vance had strong opinions about refraining from attacking Iran, but that he understood he was not in charge. Instead, that person said, Mr. Vance is now working to fine-tune the strategy.
Just days ago, Mr. Vance offered statements that appeared to contradict what Mr. Trump had revealed about his plans for military engagement in the Middle East.
On Thursday, Mr. Vance told The Washington Post that there was “no chance” the United States would engage in a so-called forever war he had long been opposed to, like the one in Iraq or Afghanistan.
Then, after Mr. Vance said on Fox News that Mr. Trump could “go for a lot longer” if he liked, Mr. Trump weighed in on social media.
“As was stated to me today, we have a virtually unlimited supply of these weapons,” Mr. Trump said about stockpiles. “Wars can be fought ‘forever,’ and very successfully, using just these supplies,” he added.
Tyler Pager contributed reporting from Washington.
Katie Rogers is a White House correspondent for The Times, reporting on President Trump.
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