For a man with his eye on the White House in 2028, US Vice President JD Vance has kept a low profile since the start of the Iran war.
The former US Marine, who served in Iraq, built a political brand as a non-interventionist who wanted to keep America out of any more long, foreign wars.
But the 41-year-old now finds himself treading a tightrope between loyalty to Donald Trump on Iran and to the conflict-sceptic MAGA faithful he’ll need to win the Republican nomination in two years.
Even Trump admitted they had their differences on “Operation Epic Fury.”
“He was, I would say, philosophically a little bit different than me,” Trump said on Monday of Vance. “I think he was maybe less enthusiastic about going — but he was quite enthusiastic.”
While he has publicly backed Trump’s Iran operation, Vance has only given one television interview since it started, in which he stressed it would not be another American “forever war.”
The New York Times reported that once it was clear Trump was set on the strikes, Vance pushed for them to move quickly.
– ‘Very uncomfortable’ –
On the night the war started, Vance was in the White House Situation Room, according to a photo issued by his office, while the president, US Secretary of State Marco Rubio and other key team members were huddled at Trump’s Mar-a-Lago resort in Florida.
He has not commented when attending the transfers of US service members killed in Iran, and referred only briefly to the “conflict” in an unrelated political event this week.
The usually prolific social media user also has been virtually silent.
“The war’s put him in a very uncomfortable space, ideologically and politically,” Matt Dallek, a professor of political management at George Washington University, told AFP.
“Maybe even more than Trump, JD Vance came to power because of his anti-interventionist credentials.”
Vance’s office did not respond when asked multiple times to comment by AFP.
But his spokesman William Martin said on X earlier this week that claims he was keeping a low profile were “ridiculous,” noting that Vance was on “primetime TV” after the operation began.
In past years, Vance has been much more vocal.
Vance was the senator for Ohio when he wrote an opinion piece in the Wall Street Journal in 2023 titled: “Trump’s Best Foreign Policy? Not Starting Any Wars.”
In the 2024 election, as Trump’s vice presidential candidate, he said that “our interest, I think very much, is in not going to war with Iran.”
In office, Vance has also served as Trump’s attack dog on foreign policy.
His hawkish opposition to US support for Ukraine after Russia’s invasion exploded into the open when he triggered a furious confrontation between Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky and Trump in the Oval Office last year.
Vance has, however, always been a political chameleon.
In the lead-up to the 2016 US presidential election, Vance once compared the Republican to Nazi leader Adolf Hitler.
– Vance v Rubio? –
But what does it mean for Vance in what is widely expected to be a battle against top diplomat Rubio in 2028?
Neither man has officially declared his intention to run for the presidency — and Rubio has publicly said he won’t challenge the man who has become one of his closest friends in the administration if he throws his hat in the ring.
Trump, meanwhile, has not said which one he will choose to anoint as the heir to his MAGA movement.
But the Wall Street Journal said that Rubio got far louder cheers when Trump asked a crowd at a Mar-a-Lago fundraiser on the evening before the Iran attacks, which one they wanted.
A long-term foreign policy hawk, Rubio, 54, has been heavily involved in the planning and defence of the Iran operation and has repeatedly won Trump’s praise in recent months.
But Trump’s shadow will be hard to escape for both men.
“Whatever Vance man says or does, it be very hard for him to distance himself from Trump — and for that matter Rubio’s going to have a hard time doing this as well,” said George Washington University’s Dallek.
AFP
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