A war launched by President Donald Trump to weaken Iran may instead reshape his own political legacy – and hand a high-stakes dilemma to Vice President JD Vance, according to a new analysis in The Atlantic.
In an opinion piece published Friday, foreign policy expert Karim Sadjadpour said while Trump “went to war intending to break Iran’s power,” the Islamic Republic remains standing – and now holds the upper hand ahead of talks he framed as make-or-break for the MAGA administration.
“Although Trump had hoped to determine Iran’s future, Tehran may now determine his,” Sadjadpour wrote. “Iran holds veto power over Trump’s legacy—and the political future of his vice president, J.D. Vance.”
The looming in-person meeting – set to mark the most senior in-person U.S.-Iran engagement since the 1979 revolution – will be led by Vance, “a newcomer to Middle East diplomacy,” as Trump appears to step back.
“When toppling the Iranian regime appeared within reach to him, Trump wanted the credit; now, sensing the war’s unpopularity, he is content to let Vance own the outcome,” according to Sadjadpour, a senior fellow at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace and Georgetown University professor.
Trump himself has joked about the position he placed Vance in, Sadjadpour noted Friday. “If a deal doesn’t happen, I’m blaming J.D. Vance…If it does happen, I’m taking full credit,” Trump reportedly joked.
Iran’s leverage, the analysis argued, is economic, “rather than nuclear, extortion.”
“Few countries feel directly threatened by an Iranian bomb, but most people around the world have felt the consequences of Iran’s closure of the Strait of Hormuz, a waterway through which flows nearly a quarter of the world’s seaborne oil and a fifth of its natural gas,” Sadjadpour told readers Friday.
“Desperation was the mother of Iran’s strategy,” he concluded.
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