Welcome to Thursday’s edition of Washington Secrets, which is something of a deep dive into Vice President JD Vance’s role in the Trump administration. Much of it is played behind a wall of silence. His aides are not bigging up his achievements or strategically leaking to bolster his position. The result has been an assumption that his anti-conflict credentials have put him at odds with the President. Instead, they have provided him a vital role…
As the clock ticked down on Donald Trump’s threat to wipe out an “entire civilization” in Iran, his vice president was on another continent.
Vance, whether by accident or design, has often been absent at critical moments during Trump’s wars. This time, one of the most war-skeptical members of the Cabinet was in Hungary offering a helping hand to Viktor Orban, the country’s prime minister, who is at risk of defeat in Sunday’s election.
But as crunch time arrived, he turned his attention away from Hungary and hit the phones, talking to U.S. negotiators and key Pakistani figures to secure a ceasefire.
“My key role was I sat on the phone a lot, I answered a lot of phone calls,” he told reporters traveling with him on Air Force Two. “I made a lot of phone calls. And again, I’m happy about where we are.”
A source close to Vance told Secrets just how it went down. After Trump’s main envoys, Jared Kushner and Steve Witkoff, had laid the groundwork, the VP came in as the “closer.”
“Witkoff was probably the main person involved, but JD got involved too once it was getting to the final push,” said the source. “He came in at the end to get it across the line.”
For a figure who is known to be uneasy about Trump’s pivot towards military action, it suggests a new role.
While Secretary of State and National Security Adviser Marco Rubio has been prepared to start conflicts at the President’s request, Vance has found a place in ending them.
Alex Gray, a national security official in Trump’s first White House, said Vance won trust by keeping his advice and guidance completely confidential to a level unheard of in Trump’s first term, which was characterized by leaks and division.
“I would focus on less where he fits on an ideological spectrum or a policy spectrum, and more on the fact … that he’s just a good negotiator, and he’s just a talented diplomat on the world stage,” Gray said. “What shows through is that he, by all accounts, made extraordinary progress in a short period of time.”
While Vance and his team have kept his advice to Trump private, the world got a small taste of it from an account of conversations behind closed doors, published just before the ceasefire was announced.
“In front of his colleagues, Mr. Vance warned Mr. Trump that a war against Iran could cause regional chaos and untold numbers of casualties,” reported New York Times writers Maggie Haberman and Jonathan Swan for a new book. “It could also break apart Mr. Trump’s political coalition and would be seen as a betrayal by many voters who had bought into the promise of no new wars.”
Taken together with his pivotal role as closer, it showed the makings of a Vance playbook: First making the case that the U.S. should stay out of a foreign adventure, before stepping in to make a decisive impact.
Last year, it was skirmishes between India and Pakistan. A terror attack in Indian-controlled Kashmir threatened all-out war between the two nuclear powers.
“We’re not going to get involved in the middle of a war that’s fundamentally none of our business and has nothing to do with America’s ability to control it,” Vance said initially.
But he was soon pressed into service alongside Rubio to de-escalate the conflict. It was then that he developed a relationship with Pakistan’s most senior military officer, Field Marshal Asim Munir.
That would be a vitally important connection, said Michael Kugelman, resident senior fellow for South Asia at the Atlantic Council, likely bolstered when Munir made two visits to the White House last year.
“Given how much … space the administration has given to Vance on foreign policy issues, broadly speaking, it would suggest that he has had the chance to be involved in very high-level engagements with Pakistan,” Kugelman said.
Vance is due to arrive in Islamabad on Saturday morning for the next round of talks. Pakistan’s top general is likely to be one of the prime interlocutors, mediating indirect talks between Iran and the U.S.
Given that the ceasefire is already under intense pressure, Vance will need all his negotiating skills to keep things on track. Is it too early for Trump’s closer?
Vance the communicator
As well as the closer, Vance demonstrated on Wednesday evening that he is fulfilling another role.
Answering reporters’ questions about what had been agreed and where things are going, he offered a clear explanation about the various 10-point plans that had circulated — and he suggested the first one may have been produced by ChatGPT.
Vance delivered a diplomatic explanation for why Pakistan and Iran may have come away thinking the ceasefire deal included Lebanon, where Israel continues to strike Hezbollah.
Mohammad Bagher Ghalibaf, a brigadier general who is the speaker of Iran’s Parliament and is expected to be at talks on Saturday, said the truce was “unreasonable” because the U.S. continued to oppose Iranian nuclear enrichment and Israel was attacking Lebanon.
“I actually wonder how good he is at understanding English,” Vance told reporters, “because there are things that he said that frankly didn’t make sense in the context of negotiations that we’ve had.”
The statement was almost certainly designed for domestic political consumption, he might have added.
READ MORE: Vance attempts to clear up confusion around three Iran war peace proposals
Lunchtime reading
‘We lost the plot’: Rahm Emanuel’s case against his own party: Emanuel may be running in 2028 with every incentive to paint himself as the adult in the room and the answer to Democrats’ problems, but, as my colleague Jay Caruso points out, that doesn’t mean he is wrong.
Once ‘Ultra MAGA’, Trump supporters fume about Iran on Truth Social: The New York Times has plundered replies to Trump’s social media posts for a fun story about how his supporters (former, maybe?) have expressed their anger at the war in Iran by replying to the president online.
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