The vice president of the United States, , is usually very active on social networks, emulating the president. However, since the beginning of the Israeli-American attack against Iran, on Saturday, February 28, the number two has preferred cover up.
His messages these days are few and institutional, the work of his team, and he has only written by himself to honor the soldiers killed in the mission (there are seven in this one) and, once, to defend his boss: “Trump will not put the United States into a conflict that will last for years without a clear objective. Iran will never be allowed to obtain a nuclear weapon. That is the objective of this operation and President Trump will carry it out to its completion,” he said, accompanying some images of.
It focuses, therefore, on reassuring the public about the US objectives in this conflict and on accompanying the fallen and their families. He has been in charge of receiving the coffins at Armed Forces bases. He had to go through all the drinks. Trump, only one. The image of a coffin getting off a plane, covered by the national flag and escorted by soldiers, is not popular, because the Government has involved its troops in a new war, when it promised peace.
While many Republicans were quick to congratulate the president during the initial weekend of his operation and the death of Iran’s supreme leader, his vice president waited 72 hours before speaking out. He finally did it on March 2, also on Fox, in a brief six-minute interview. This moderation raises questions about his stance in the face of this military escalation.
And Vance is a former veteran of the US Marine Corps, who built his political image based precisely on his opposition to US military interventions around the world, both in and around the world. He has repeatedly criticized Washington’s participation in “endless wars,” as he said in the 2024 election campaign, which brought Trump back to the Oval Office.
They were not loose comments, it was a pillar in his argument, which helped win the young vote, of that generation that does not want to see itself forcibly enrolled in a country that it “does not even know,” to paraphrase Trump. He said, for example, already in the pre-campaign, in January 2023: “The best foreign policy for Trump? Not starting wars,” he wrote in an opinion article published in the .
At that time, the Republican billionaire also presented himself as “the peace candidate” and promised to put an end to American interventions abroad, something that could earn him – in his wildest dreams – the Nobel Peace Prize. But since his return to the White House, Trump has not kept his promises to the letter. On the contrary. It has gone further. It has already bombed up to seven countries.
This same night, during a meeting with various media representatives in Miami (Florida), an informant directly questioned Trump if there was any division with the vice president over the war conflict. “We got along very well on this. I would say that he was a little different from me philosophically. I think maybe he wasn’t that enthusiastic about going, but I felt like it was something we had to do. I didn’t think we had a choice. If we didn’t do it, they would have done it to us,” he responded without hesitation or hiding the differences.
“I would say he was a little different from me philosophically. I think maybe he wasn’t as enthusiastic about going, but I felt like it was something we had to do.”
“I felt that, based on the negotiations that were taking place with , , , and everyone involved, it seemed to me that they were trying to convince us,” he further emphasized.
An uncomfortable position
The president has struck from Yemen to Venezuela and Vance had already opted then for discretion and moderation. He was not the most effusive about the damage to the Houthis, one of those in the Middle East, and not about the arrest of . His position draws attention by itself and by contrast, by the difference in speech with the Secretary of State, Rubio, another possible successor to Trump for the 2028 elections and who is much more inclined to defend an assertive international position.
The operation in Iran has further weakened his political position and his future in the White House. So far, he remains the favorite to succeed Trump as the Republican Party’s presidential candidate in 2028. But to achieve this, he will have to defend the Trump Administration’s record, including this latest operation against Tehran, a delicate matter for someone who based his political career on criticizing American interventionism. And whose consequences we still have no idea what they will be. For now, it is not the quick war that Washington expected: Trump began by talking about “two or three days”, which he went on to extend to “four or five weeks” in less than 24 hours. The Pentagon has even mentioned .
Donald and Melania Trump and JD Vance, in addition to other senior officials, receive the bodies of those who fell in Iran’s offensive, on March 7, 2026, in Dover (Delaware).
Diplomacy and absence
48 hours before the start of Operation Epic Fury in Iran, the vice president declared in an interview with the : “I think we all prefer the diplomatic option.” His administration and the Islamic Republic regime were then in their third round of talks mediated by Omani officials in Geneva. The mediators said it was going well and they were even going to repeat it the following week. Everything was nothing.
The next day, Vance continued his negotiations by meeting with Oman’s foreign minister, a key mediator in talks between the two archenemies. notes that “in the days before the attacks, some of Trump’s top advisers, including Vice President Vance, expressed reservations about the operation,” he further notes.
Another strange thing: When the attacks in Iran began, Vance was not with Trump, who was overseeing operations from Mar-a-Lago, Florida, in his private home. Yes, Marco Rubio was there, for example. The vice president was in Washington, in the so-called “Crisis Room” of the White House, a detail that has generated a lot of speculation, a photo that Vance has not even put in his X.
However, a spokesperson for the vice president assured the that Vance participated “fully” in the planning process and supervised the execution of the operation from the Situation Room in Washington.
He argued that Vance was in the capital not out of disapproval of the offensive, but simply to comply with the administration’s security protocols, which recommends the separation of the president and vice president in case something happens to one of them. The White House issued similar statements to the press, furthering Trump’s remarks tonight that his deputy didn’t need to be convinced of anything.
Weakened credibility
Despite these statements aimed at calming tensions, the disconnect between Vance’s ideas and the operation launched by Trump is evident and undermines his credibility even within the movement. “It’s pretty bad for Vance,” he told on condition of anonymity, the director of a major far-right NGO that advocates for a more measured foreign policy. “He has had to take on the thankless task of subordinating himself and trying to convince people like us that the situation was in good hands, and that is difficult to accept,” he says.
In an opinion article published last weekend in the British magazine conservative essayist and former Vance ally Sohrab Ahmari harshly criticized the vice president. “The Vance who once vehemently criticized a moralizing foreign policy “now oversees attacks explicitly aimed at liberating the Iranian people,” he wrote, lamenting a “staggering irony.”
In his aforementioned interview with Fox News, Vance adopted a calming tone to try to appease the anti-interventionist wing, while continuing to support their leader Trump. With a serious expression, however, he defended the attacks against Iran and stated that they pursued the “clearly defined” objective of preventing Iran from acquiring nuclear weapons.
Above all, he tried to reassure the public about the duration of the American commitment, referring to Iraq and Afghanistan, great ghosts of the past that Republicans promised not to awaken. However, for the moment, the US president remains vague regarding the scope and duration of the operation. We will see how his second and possible heir continues to behave if things do not calm down. For now, he continues to assume his powers.
