Vice PresidentJD Vancehas largely opposed U.S. intervention abroad, but after President Donald Trump decided tostrike Iran, Vance now faces a conflict between his past comments and his role in the administration, forcing him to navigate thegrowing political divideand its possible impact on his potential future political ambitions.
In an op-ed Vance wrote in 2023, while he was still in the Senate, before Trump selected him as his running mate, he argued that leaders in both parties supported costly and unsuccessful interventions in Iraq, Afghanistan, Libya and Syria.
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In the article, titled "Trump's Best Foreign Policy? Not Starting Any Wars," Vance describes then-candidate Trump as the first significant break from that interventionist consensus. It argued that Trump started no wars in his first term, despite pressure to do so, and that was part of the reason Vance supported him in his 2024 presidential run.
Asked by talk show host Tim Dillon during the 2024 campaign how a Trump administration would handle a war in the Middle East, Vance said going to war with Iran would not be in the interest of the U.S. and that it would be "massively expensive."
"Well, I mean, a couple of principles, right? So, obviously, you know, Israel has the right to defend itself, but America's interest is sometimes going to be distinct, like sometimes we're gonna have overlapping interests, and sometimes we're gonna have distinct interests. And our interests, I think very much, is in not going to war with Iran, right? It would be huge distraction of resources. It would be massively expensive to our country," Vance said at the time.
But speaking with reporters in Azerbaijan last month on the subject of Iran, prior to recentU.S. strikes on Iranthat killed several Iranian leaders,including Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, Iran's supreme leader, Vance said that Trump was working toward a deal to ensure that Iran does not obtain a nuclear weapon, and if that did not work out, there were other options.
As vice president, Vance has been steadfast in supporting the administration's foreign policy agenda. During the administration'sfirst strikes on Iranin June, Vance was in the White House Situation Room with Trump and other top administration officials. During the military operation in which the U.S.captured Venezuelan leader Nicolás Maduro, Vance joined the president in Florida and was on the secure video conference monitoring the operation through the night.
"The president's told his entire senior team that we should be trying to cut a deal that ensures the Iranians don't have a nuclear weapon. But if we can't cut that deal, then there's another option on the table. So, I think the president's going to continue to preserve his options," Vance said in February.
Vancespoke to ABC News' Jonathan Karlthe day after the United States' June strikes on Iran, defending the administration's action. But when asked if he could definitively say that Iran's nuclear program had been destroyed, Vance said that the U.S. had set Iran's nuclear program back "substantially." In his address to the nation, Trump said that the strikes "completely and totally obliterated" Iran's key nuclear enrichment facilities.
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Vance told ABC News at the time that Trump was not interested in a drawn-out conflict in the Middle East. He made similar comments prior to Saturday's attack, tellingThe Washington Postthat there was "no chance" of a drawn-out war in Iran if the U.S. moved forward with the strikes.
Vance reiterated that same sentiment inan interview with Fox Newson Monday night, but also added that the operation against Iran "could go for a lot longer."
"There's just no way that Donald Trump is going to allow this country to get into a multi-year conflict with no clear end in sight and no clear objective. What is different about President Trump, and it's frankly different about both Republicans and Democrats of the past, is that he's not going to let his country go to war unless there's a clearly defined objective," Vance told Fox News.
"He's defined that objective as Iran cannot have a nuclear weapon and has to commit long-term to never trying to rebuild the nuclear capability. It's pretty clear. It's pretty simple, and I think that means that we're not going to get into the problems that we've had with Iraq and Afghanistan," he said.
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Following the U.S. strikes on Iran, Vance did not make any public comments on the military operation for two days. The first time he addressed the strikes publicly was on the Monday night interview with Fox News.
In a statement to ABC News about Vance's public communications during the early days of the strikes, a senior White House official said: "The national security team was huddled all day everyday focused on executing the operation and being tightly coordinated on ensuring uniformity of message. Especially in a very fluid situation, the national security team was deliberate on letting the President's statements and addresses to the nation stand as the operation unfolded. The Vice President and other Administration officials conducted multiple media interviews, and will continue to do so. The national security team also held multiple briefing calls with members of the press and key stakeholders after the operation began."
In the lead-up to Saturday's strikes, Vance made his reservations about the strikes known internally, a source familiar with the matter confirmed to ABC News.
Once it became clear that the decision had been made to move forward, Vance shifted his focus to limiting casualties and pushed to move quickly on a strike out of fear that the plans could leak if the administration waited longer to engage, possibly leading Iran to attack U.S. troops in the region, the source also said.
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This is not the first time that Vance has expressed concerns internally about possible foreign military intervention by the U.S.
Last year, in the Signal group chat discussing the U.S. attack on Houthis in Yemen that a journalist was inadvertently invited to join,Vance appeared to break with Trumpand questioned whether the president recognized that a unilateral U.S. attack on the Houthis to keep international shipping lanes open was at odds with his tough talk about European nations paying their share of such efforts.
"I am not sure the president is aware how inconsistent this is with his message on Europe right now," Vance wrote in the chat at the time. "There's a further risk that we see a moderate tosevere spike in oil prices. I am willing to support the consensus of the team and keep these concerns to myself. But there is a strong argument for delaying this a month, doing the messaging work on why this matters, seeing where the economy is, etc."
Vance has not yet officially said whether he will run in 2028.
Vice presidential scholar Joel Goldstein told ABC News that if Vance, seen as afront-runner for the 2028 Republican presidential nomination, were to decide to run for president, the Iran operation would carry its own risks, as the conflict's fallout would be inherited by Vance.
"So, it seems to me that this situation poses a lot of risk for Vance: number one, it raises the question of his level of influence with Trump, given that Trump ends up taking a course that is, you know, widely at odds with the sort of rhetoric that Vance has used throughout his short political career, about foreign interventions and about what Trump would do or should do," Goldstein said.
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Goldstein told ABC News that the recent decision by the Trump administration to attack Iran and the several policy shifts and changes Vance has made over the past several years could lead voters to question his positions and values.
"It alienates people who like Vance because they think he's a noninterventionist, and now look at him and say, 'Why is he supporting foreign intervention instead of focusing domestically?' But it also raises the risk that people will think you're simply not credible and will wonder where is his core?"
"Here's a guy who has shifted on a number of things. And you know, that raises the risk that there's no substance there," Goldstein said.
