Vice President JD Vance heads to Islamabad this weekend in a precarious position: hoping to negotiate a lasting end to a war in Iran he never wanted.
Vance has privately voiced opposition to the war for weeks — to President Trump and top White House aides — even as Trump has pursued an aggressive military campaign, according to two White House officials granted anonymity to speak candidly about internal dynamics. Now, he will lead the U.S. delegation in ceasefire talks with Iran — perhaps the highest-stakes assignment of his political career.
The balancing act of publicly supporting Trump’s military campaign while privately expressing reservations has left some in Vance’s inner circle on edge, according to one of the officials.
“Vance’s national security team is extremely wary,” the official said. “So many people are afraid of being on the outs.”
The White House has forcefully defended Vance’s support for and involvement in Trump’s war effort, pushing back against early criticism that Vance had gone silent and been excluded from key meetings during the opening weeks of the war.
“The vice president has been fully integrated in the entire process of Operation Epic Fury, from the planning and launch of the operation to working diligently with Witkoff and Kushner as talks progress and now leading the U.S. delegation to Pakistan,” a White House official told MS NOW in response to a request for comment.
But even as Vance now helms the peace talks, his private reservations have cost him influence inside the administration.
“Realistically, Vance has lost clout within the White House because of his dissent,” the aforementioned White House official said.
Vance’s skepticism of foreign entanglements is no secret: He has long opposed U.S. military interventionism, and his unease with the Iran war is widely understood inside the administration.
That skepticism could actually be “advantageous” in the talks, according to a former Trump White House official familiar with internal dynamics. Negotiators on both sides are likely to believe that Vance genuinely wants a permanent ceasefire — which could lend credibility to the American position.
But Vance’s ambivalence also creates a liability, the former official warned, potentially undercutting the unified front the White House needs at the negotiating table.
“There’s a vulnerability in Vance’s involvement,” said the former official. “If it’s clear that Vance is uncomfortable and he says or does something that softens the president’s tone and tenor, then that just adds a whole new voice that you can’t have.”
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“There’s a happy medium,” the former official added. “He has to find that, and it’s going to be a challenge — no doubt about it.”
Vance, alongside special envoy Steve Witkoff and Jared Kushner, is set to meet with Iranian counterparts Saturday in Islamabad for in-person negotiations — the first such talks since a fragile ceasefire took hold.
“The entire team has always been on the same page, which is why President Trump has tasked Vice President Vance to help lead the negotiating efforts this weekend,” White House communications director Steven Cheung told MS NOW in a statement.
The agenda is daunting. At the top of the list: reopening the Strait of Hormuz, de-escalating tensions tied to Israeli strikes in Lebanon, pressing Iran to halt uranium enrichment and converting what Vance himself on Wednesday called a “fragile” ceasefire into a permanent one.
The stakes are difficult to overstate.
On Wednesday, Iran publicly released a 10-point framework for negotiations — which Trump had previously described as a “workable basis on which to negotiate” a permanent end to the war. But the framework includes demands the U.S. is almost certain to reject — among them, the lifting of sanctions on Iran, Iranian control of the Strait of Hormuz and a full U.S. withdrawal from the Middle East. The White House said Wednesday that the document Iran released did not reflect what Trump had endorsed.
In a different administration, Vance’s skepticism of the war might be viewed as a useful check on more hawkish impulses. In Trump’s White House, it has proven to be a complication.
“[Aides] are making sure they appease Trump, so they are all on board with what he says,” said the former White House official. “Seven years ago, you would have had a lot more outspoken voices.”
Jake Traylor is a White House correspondent for MS NOW.