Vice President JD Vance’s approach to Iran has opened a larger debate on the American Right. Critics see too much willingness to negotiate with Tehran and too much distance from Israel. But they are mistaking strategic restraint for weakness. Vance is beginning to give “America First” something it has often lacked: a coherent foreign policy.
Its organizing principle is sovereignty: American power should serve American interests, and Washington should retain the freedom to decide for itself what those interests require.
Iran provided the clearest test. Vance’s position was neither pacifist nor sympathetic to Tehran. He supported American strength while resisting another open-ended Middle Eastern war and backing negotiations. The logic is traditional statecraft: Military power is a means of achieving political objectives, not an objective in itself. Diplomacy from a position of strength can turn military leverage into political results.
But Iran also exposed a more difficult question: What happens when American and Israeli priorities diverge?
Vance has addressed this with unusual clarity for a senior Republican. American and Israeli interests, he has said, can be aligned or “misaligned.” Supporting Israel, therefore, does not require treating every Israeli security priority as an American one.
Israel understandably views Iran through the requirements of its own security. Washington has a different responsibility: determining whether escalation strengthens the United States or draws it deeper into another costly regional conflict.
Vance sharpened that distinction in July when he criticized what he described as an effort involving people within the Israeli government to influence American opinion against the Iran agreement. His objection was not to Israel advocating its interests. Every country does that. The responsibility of American leaders is to distinguish an ally’s interests from their own.
That is not anti-Israel. It is “America First” applied consistently.
The same principle has a domestic dimension. Pro-Israel organizations and voters have long been influential participants in Washington’s Middle East debate. A more independent foreign policy would benefit from a wider range of American constituencies, bringing different historical experiences to questions of sovereignty, alliances, and war.
Vance could strengthen the political base for this approach by engaging more closely with Irish-American and Armenian-American networks. Both come from diasporic traditions shaped by national survival and the experience of navigating among stronger powers. Their greater political engagement could widen support for a foreign policy that backs allies without assuming that the interests of any ally and those of the U.S. are interchangeable.
The point is not to organize one ethnic constituency against another, but to preserve enough political space for American policy to be determined by American interests.
None of this requires American withdrawal from the world. Strategic independence means choosing where American power matters most. Today, that means China.
China’s industrial power, technological ambitions, position in critical supply chains, and growing military capabilities present a challenge of a different order. An America repeatedly consumed by secondary conflicts will have fewer resources for its principal long-term competitor.
Here, Vance’s economic nationalism and foreign policy restraint converge. Reindustrialization, secure energy, resilient supply chains, technological capacity, and military strength are all elements of national power. A country that loses its productive foundations eventually limits its freedom of action abroad.
JD VANCE’S ECONOMIC AGENDA IS JUST SOCIALISM WRAPPED IN A NATIONALIST FLAG
Washington has spent decades debating how American power should be used. Vance is asking the more fundamental question: What is American power for?
His answer could give “America First” the foreign policy it still lacks: strong enough to fight when necessary, confident enough to negotiate when possible, loyal to allies without becoming subordinate to them, and sovereign enough to know the difference.
Den Kalmyk is a senior lecturer at Central European University. His commentary has appeared in American Thinker, the Washington Times, and Stars and Stripes.