By Shashi P.B.B. Malla

JD Vance, the U.S. Vice President leads the charge to negotiate an end to the Iran War he privately opposed starting (NYT, April 11-12).

Weeks after JD Vance privately warned President Trump of the costs of a full-scale U.S. war with Iran, he has now been asked by Trump to lead the negotiations to end that very war and master the biggest foreign policy crisis that Trump has faced during his time in office.

Vance, along with Steve Witkoff, the president’s special envoy, and Jared Kushner, Trump’s son-in-law, are meeting with the Iranian delegation in Islamabad, Pakistan.

A two-week ceasefire between the United States and Iran is under heavy strain.

It is the first highest level meeting between the U.S. and Iranian officials since the Islamic Revolution in 1979.

The stakes are enormous for both Trump and for Vance, whose most high-profile assignments from Trump have involved domestic politics.

Vance has, of course, undertaken external excursions like participating in the Munich Security Conference and boosting the electoral chances of Viktor Orban in Hungary.

Before the war began, the vice president was planning to be heavily focussed on traveling in the United States ahead of the midterm elections in November, counteracting widespread concerns over the cost of living and affordability by attacking Democrats as out of touch with reality and politically extreme.

The war has upended that messaging.

An Iranian virtual blockade around the Strait of Hormuz, a key maritime route for oil, natural gas, fertilizers and other important products, has sent energy prices soaring.

“Knowing that this is a midterm election year, that is the biggest leverage point that the Iranians have, and they know that,” said Marc Short, who served as chief of staff to Vice President Mike Pence during Trump’s first term.

“That creates a challenge for the president’s negotiating team.”

Short added: “there’s a best case scenario that you have successful talks, and you have a great news cycle about it. But doesn’t Iran know that they can break the terms, as they have in the past?”

JD Vance, 41, has stayed largely at the periphery of other high-stakes foreign policy missions, including the operation to seize Nicolas Maduro and depose him as Venezuela’s president.

He was traveling in Azerbaijan in February, when Benjamin Netanyahu, the prime minister of Israel, delivered the crucial presentation at the White House urging U.S. involvement in a war with Iran.

Last Tuesday, as Trump threatened to wipe out the Iranian Civilization, Vance was in Hungary, stumping for Viktor Orban, the country’s populist, nationalist prime minister.

[It was all in vain, the opposition party has won a two-thirds majority].

Vance is now leading the effort to persuade Iranians to keep the Strait of Hormuz open even as the Israelis continue a bombing campaign against Iran-backed Hezbollah militants in Lebanon, a conflict that the United States has said is not part of the current cease-fire agreement but is nonetheless threatening to disturb it.

His initial opposition to the war was appealing to Pakistan officials [and also to the Iranians, no doubt]. Trump’s choice for Vance to lead the peace effort was for once, wise.  

The negotiations could be a delicate balancing act for Vance, who must work closely with Witcoff and Kushner, two people with deep ties to Trump who have been traveling the world on his behalf.

Vance allies say his presence adds formality and heft to negotiations.

Witcoff and Kushner style of work is often conducted through constant phone calls back to Washington, and by circulating flurries of proposals.

Vance is also joining a pair of negotiators who had failed to avert the war in the first place during an initial round of talks.

Role of the VP in American Politics

Vance’s involvement highlights the complex nature of the modern U.S. vice presidency.

Unlike other cabinet members, Vance not have a constitutionally defined role or a department or agency to run.

For some people who’ve held the job, a lack of an established lane can be destabilizing and frustrating.

As vice president, Vance has been content to be a “Swiss Officer Army Knife” with a willingness to go where he is needed rather than to ask for specific tasks (NYT).

But the vice president is the only person in the administration who can immediately be empowered to to step into a high-profile diplomatic mission and speak as a direct emissary of the president.

“Because the vice president cab pull all the strands together like no other cabinet member, it’s as close to a mirror to the president as you can get,” said Philip H. Gordon, who was the national security adviser to Vice President Kamala Harris.

“The vice president doesn’t have to be central to anything, but when asked to undertake an important diplomatic mission, then the vice president is hugely empowered.”

In 2021, Harris was sent to France to smooth over relations with President Emmanuel Macron after the United States, Australia and Britain brusquely cancelled a lucrative and strategically important submarine contract that the French had with the Australians.

For his part, Trump has a history of sending his No. 2 to resolve thorny geopolitical disputes.

In 2019, Trump pulled an unsuspecting Pence into the Oval Office and told him to head to Ankara, the Turkish capital, and persuade the country’s president, Recep Tayyip Erdogan to pull back his forces from northern Syria.

Pence emerged after five hours of talks with a cease-fire agreement that the United States claimed as a victory.

In truth, Erdogan refused to pull back from the enclave, gaining territory and displacing tens of thousands of Kurds in the region without paying a diplomatic price.

Vance is now tasked with helping resolve a conflict much larger in scale and complexity than any vice president before him has faced.

Before returning to the United States last Wednesday, Vance told reporters that he had spent a lot of time working the phones trying to help secure the cease-fire, but said that the president would resume fighting if the truce did not hold.

“I sat on the phone a lot,” Vance said. He added: “I think the president has struck a good deal for the American people, but fundamentally, the Iranians have got to take the next step, or the president has a lot of options to go back to the war.”

For Vance, the elevated role could bolster but also complicate his political future.

“This reduces any opportunity he might have to distance himself from the policy if he he’s going to be the lead negotiator,” Gordon said.

At various times in Trump’s second term, Vance has privately voiced disagreements with the president’s foreign policy.

In a Signal chat message with other senior Trump officials early last year, Vance said he thought the timing of a forthcoming Houthi-Yemen operation was a ‘mistake’ and appeared to question if Trump understood the potential consequences of the action, according to The Atlantic, which published parts of the exchange.

As Vance nurtures his political ambitions, Trump has repeatedly floated Marco Rubio, his secretary of state and national security adviser, as another potential presidential candidate.

Rubio by contrast, has been much more aligned with and central to Trump’s foreign policy agenda.

In Islamabad, Vance will have his most high-profile test of negotiating on the world stage, and experts warn he faces a tall task.

“For all the presentation of the cease-fire as an agreement, it was a very narrow agreement on a cease-fire with everything else to be determined,” Gordon said.

He added : “It’s going to be an ugly, messy and incomplete process.   

Latest Developments: U.S. leaves Iran talks without deal

Vice President J.D. Vance’s failure to win the concessions the United States sought from Iran in a single, marathon negotiating session over its nuclear programme was no surprise to most experts (NYT, April 13).

The failure leaves the Trump administration facing several unpalatable options:

• A lengthy negotiation with Tehran over the future of its nuclear programme, or
• A resumption of the war that has already created the largest energy disruption in modern times, and
• The prospect of a long struggle over who controls the Strait of Hormuz.

Trump threatens blockade of the Strait of Hormuz

Trump reacted quickly after US-Iran negotiations in Pakistan ended abruptly without an agreement or next diplomatic steps in sight.

On Sunday, he said the US Navy would “immediately” begin a blockade of ships entering or leaving the Persian Gulf via the Strait of Hormuz (AP/Associated Press, April 13).

In his first public comments after the 21-hour negotiations, Trump sought to eliminate Iran’s key source of leverage in the war by exerting strategic control over the waterway that was responsible for the shipping of 20 % percent of global oil supplies before the fighting began.

The writer can be reached at:

shashimalla125@gmail.com