Vice President JD Vance on Friday warned Iran not to “play” the U.S. as he headed overseas for negotiations aimed at ending their war.
President Donald Trump has tasked the member of his inner circle who has seemed to be the most reluctant defender of the six-week-old conflict with Iran to now find a resolution and stave off the U.S. president’s astonishing threat to wipe out its “whole civilization.”
Vance, who has long been skeptical of foreign military interventions and outspoken about the prospect of sending troops into open-ended conflicts, set off Friday to lead mediated talks with Iran in the Pakistani capital of Islamabad. Boarding Air Force Two on his way to Pakistan, the vice president said, “We’re looking forward to the negotiation. I think it’s gonna be positive. We’ll of course see.”
He cited Trump in saying, “If the Iranians are willing to negotiate in good faith, we’re certainly willing to extend the open hand.” But he added, “If they’re gonna try and play us, then they’re gonna find that the negotiating team is not that receptive.”
Vance also said that Trump “gave us some pretty clear guidelines” on how talks should go, but he did not elaborate. He did not take questions from reporters traveling with him.
Vance’s trip comes as a tenuous, temporary ceasefire appears to be on the verge of collapse. The gap between Iran’s public demands and those from the U.S. and its partner Israel appears irreconcilable. And in the U.S., where Vance may ask voters in two years to make him the next president, there is growing political and economic pressure to wrap up the conflict.
Vance is joined by Trump’s special envoy Steve Witkoff and Trump’s son-in-law Jared Kushner, who took part in three rounds of indirect talks with Iranian negotiators aimed at settling U.S. concerns about Tehran’s nuclear and ballistic weapons programs and its support for armed proxy groups in the Middle East before Trump and Israel launched the February 28 war against Iran.
The White House has provided scant detail about the format of the talks, including whether they will be direct or indirect, and has not outlined specific expectations for the meeting.
But Vance’s arrival for negotiations marks a rare moment of high-level U.S. government engagement with the Iranian government. Since the Islamic Revolution in 1979, the most direct contact came when President Barack Obama in September 2013 called newly elected Iranian President Hassan Rouhani to discuss Iran’s nuclear program.
The two sides face a steep climb in making headway
Almost immediately after the White House and Iran announced a temporary ceasefire Tuesday evening, the sides found themselves at odds over the truce’s terms.
Iran insisted that an end to the Israeli war in Lebanon was part of the ceasefire. But Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Trump said the truce did not cover Lebanon, and Israeli operations there continued.
The U.S., meanwhile, demanded that Iran follow through on reopening the Strait of Hormuz. The Islamic Republic had closed the critical shipping waterway in response to Israel’s intensifying attacks against the Hezbollah terrorist group in Lebanon.
Trump on Thursday said Iran was “doing a very poor job” of allowing oil tankers to pass through, writing on social media, “That is not the agreement we have!”
White House spokeswoman Anna Kelly said Vance, Witkoff, Kushner and Secretary of State Marco Rubio “have always been collaborating on these discussions” and said Trump was optimistic that a lasting deal can be reached during the two-week ceasefire. “President Trump has a proven track record of achieving good deals on behalf of the United States and the American people, and he will only accept one that puts America first,” Kelly said.
High stakes for peace and for politics
It is the highest-stakes moment so far for Vance, who spent much of last year more in the background in the Trump White House, especially as others such as Elon Musk and Rubio took turns as ever-present advisers to the president.
But Vance’s portfolio is expanding quickly, first with a mission to root out fraud in government programs at home and now to help resolve a U.S. war in the Middle East, where complicated barely begins to describe the situation.
Vance, who served in the Iraq War while in the Marines and spent two years as a U.S. senator for Ohio and a little more than one year as vice president, has little diplomatic experience.
On Wednesday, he dismissed speculation that the Iranians had requested that he join the talks, telling reporters, “I don’t know that. I would be surprised if that was true. But, you know, I wanted to be involved because I thought I could make a difference.”
Jonathan Schanzer, a former Treasury Department official who is now executive director of the Foundation for Defense of Democracies, a hawkish Washington think tank, said Vance, with little experience on Iran policy, is an interesting choice to lead the delegation.
Trump has noted that his vice president was “less enthusiastic” than other senior officials in the Republican administration, making Vance an intriguing interlocutor for the Iranian side, Schanzer said.
“I think they probably prefer him, knowing that his perspective on foreign intervention is one of skepticism,” Schanzer said of the Iranians. “I do think that he’s going to need some help. I don’t think he’s ever been engaged in negotiations with this kind of weight, this kind of seriousness. This is as serious as it gets.”
The White House has pushed back on the characterization that Iran wanted Vance in the talks, casting it as an effort to hurt the negotiations.
The White House has not detailed who will take part in the talks besides Vance, Witkoff and Kushner, but Kelly said officials from the National Security Council, State Department and Pentagon “will also play a supportive role.”
During the early rounds of indirect nuclear talks with the Iranians before the war, Democrats and some nuclear experts questioned whether Kushner and Witkoff had enough technical knowledge. The White House has not said whether the pair, whom Trump has entrusted with some of his most difficult negotiations since returning to office, had a nuclear expert with them for those talks.
Negotiating peace is a tall order for any vice president
It is not unusual for vice presidents to take on important negotiating roles for the president, said Joel Goldstein, a law professor at Saint Louis University and an expert on the history of the vice presidency.
But, he said, “I don’t recall a situation where a vice president has been sent to negotiate a ceasefire or peace in connection with a war the United States was involved in.”
Vance and Rubio are seen as the Republican Party’s strongest potential 2028 presidential contenders, though neither has given a clear answer about whether he intends to run.
The vice president’s team is not thinking about the negotiations with an eye on future political considerations, according to a person familiar with the discussions who was not authorized to speak publicly and spoke on condition of anonymity.
As vice president, Vance would inherently carry any baggage from the administration if he eventually runs for president, Goldstein said. But stepping in to lead negotiations ties him even more directly to the conflict.
“The fact that he’s involved in the negotiations in a very visible way means that, if things go south, people will be pointing fingers at him,” Goldstein said.
At the same time, Goldstein said, “If things go well, then it will be something that he could point to.”