Vice President JD Vance is orchestrating a calculated political retreat from Trump’s Iran war, carefully positioning himself to emerge unscathedif the conflict becomes a quagmire while simultaneously undermining his 2028 rival, Secretary of State Marco Rubio.
According to New Republic analyst Alex Shephard, Vance’s public tepidness masks a deliberate strategy: stay loyal enough to avoid Trump’s wrath while privately signaling opposition to the war through carefully orchestrated leaks to sympathetic journalists.
Publicly, Vance maintains plausible deniability. He insists the Iran war differs from Iraq and Afghanistan, declaring: “The idea that we’re going to be in a Middle Eastern war for years with no end in sight—there is no chance that will happen.” He attends dignified transfers of fallen service members and makes tepid public statements supporting the operation.
But behind closed doors, the picture is starkly different. According to the New York Times, Vance “appeared to personally lean against military attacks” while simultaneously arguing that “a limited strike was a mistake. If the United States was going to hit Iran, he told the group, it should ‘go big and go fast.’”
This contradiction was no accident. Vance staked out a position he could later abandon without political cost—advocating for overwhelming force as a backdoor method of opposing the war itself. If things go badly, he can claim he opposed insufficient escalation, not the war itself.
As the conflict deteriorated, Vance began rewriting his record. Citing two senior Trump officials, Politico reported Friday that Vance is now “skeptical,” “worried about success,” and actively “opposes” the war. The message, carefully laundered through anonymous officials, is unmistakable: none of this is Vance’s responsibility.
Shephard identifies the deeper calculation: Vance views early opposition to an unpopular war as a savvy long-term positioning move for 2028—especially since it simultaneously damages Rubio, his principal rival for the party’s presidential nomination. If Iran becomes another Middle East quagmire, Rubio—a vocal hawk aligned with Trump—will suffer far greater political damage.
It is, by any measure, a “brazenly self-serving maneuver “for a sitting vice president during wartime, prioritizing personal political advancement over loyalty to his president and party, Shaphard asserted.
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