Daly: The Face of Surrender

Vice President JD Vance seems willing and able to be the guy waving the white flag on Iran.

JD Vance is having quite a moment. He’s in the middle of what will likely be his most public week as vice president. While working the national media circuit to promote his new book, he’s been on the front line of having to answer for what many critics, and high-profile Trump supporters alike, are describing as a historic American surrender to the Iranian regime.

I’m talking, of course, about the (now signed) US-Iran Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) he helped “negotiate” to end the Iran War. Following months of military dominance over the regime, and wiping out many of its leaders, the Trump administration shocked the world this week by rewarding the Iranians with previously unthinkable concessions. Those concessions include allowing the Iranians to keep their nuclear program, as well as their ballistic missiles program. Its permits them to continue funding their terror proxies. It lifts sanctions against them, and ends Israel’s military operations against Hezbollah in Lebanon (despite Israel not being party to the deal). It also gives the regime hundreds of billions of dollars.

What we get in return is the reopening of the Strait of Hormuz (which was open before Trump started dropping bombs in February), and — in the mold of former president Barack Obama’s failed Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA) — a gentleman’s agreement that Iran won’t build nuclear bombs.

Good luck with that.

Vance has seemed weirdly unfazed by our nation’s humiliation on the world stage, enjoying some good laughs on podcasts and cable news shows. Maybe he’s just excited about his book. Or maybe it’s because ending the war — even at the expense of our national honor, our national security, and the security of our allies — lines up well with his well-documented nationalist beliefs. Heck, it could even be that he just likes going out in front of the cameras, and assigning a bunch of outrageous, made-up positions and beliefs to fictional critics.

After falsely insisting earlier in the week that accurate details leaked on the MOU were Iranian propaganda, Vance went on Megyn Kelly’s show, repeated the lie, and addressed those (including longtime Trump allies) who supported and have defended the president’s decision to go to war, but are now in dismay of the administration caving to Iran’s demands.

Vance claimed those individuals “don’t have an alternative,” and that “they’re proposing an endless conflict.” He said they “want this to go on until every bomb has been dropped or until every Iranian is dead.”

That, of course, is nonsense. Aside from a number of alternatives having been presented to end the stalemate situation with the Strait of Hormuz and broader Iran War, the only person of note who suggested the death of every Iranian was President Trump himself.

“Not since Obama has a politician been this adept at destroying strawmen and misrepresenting his opponents' position,” the Washington Examiner’s David Harsanyi responded to Vance. “Most ‘hawks’ want the Iranians to be alive and free rather than under the boot of the Islamist regime [Vance’s] so chummy with. It's his capitulation that creates ‘endless’ conflict.”

President Trump has since publicly defended the MOU as well, making a number of hair-raising comments about the agreement from the G7 Summit (flanked by a giddy Howard Lutnick and a dead-inside-looking Marco Rubio). These terrible concessions ultimately fall on Trump, of course. He’s the leader of the administration and the president of the United States. But one has to wonder if some joking around the president did during his G7 press conference was a foreshadowing of things to come.

“If [the Iran deal] works out, I'm going to take the credit,” said Trump. “If it doesn't work out, I'm blaming JD. You better be careful, JD… Yeah, I like that idea. I think it's a good idea.”

The line got its intended laughter, but as economist and author, David L. Bahnsen, commented, “In what world could any just modestly intelligent person not believe this is actually 100% true?”

Others, including commentator Emily Zanotti, see a similar benefit to Trump in making Vance the face of this deal. Posting on X, Zanotti wrote, “The funny thing is, I think the WH is sending JD out because he’s about to get stabbed in the back. The Trump Admin has gone a little too long without sending a lamb to slaughter, and I’m not sure JD here realizes he’s in the chute.”

She may well be right, including the part about Vance being oblivious to how poorly he comes across in all of this. It’s no secret that Secretary of State Marco Rubio has been outshining Vance in recent months, including catching up to the vice president in 2028 GOP presidential preference polls. And as we saw in his first term, Trump is more than happy to throw his vice president under the bus once his usefulness has expired.

The Dispatch’s Nick Catoggio has a bit different take. He thinks Vance actually relishes this opportunity to get on the “right side” of a war that most Americans had opposed from the beginning, perhaps having made the calculation that it will help him politically come 2028. That may indeed be Vance’s calculus, but if it is, I’m not sure it makes him any less hapless than Zanotti suggested.

It’s hard to imagine that even an outspoken non-interventionist type like JD Vance could successfully distance himself from the war decisions of an administration he’s a top member of. Not to mention that the vast majority of Republican voters, who Vance would need to woe in the 2028 primary, supported the Iran War. There’s also the question of how much trouble Iran will be stirring up two years from now, as a result of our retreat.

As many may remember, most Americans also wanted us out of Afghanistan. They wanted that war over. That’s why both President Trump and President Biden felt comfortable working toward that objective, and bringing the war to an official end. But once the U.S. did withdrawal, under Biden, and Americans witnessed the horrific (albeit widely predicted) results of that withdrawal, Biden’s approval ratings tanked and never recovered.

Most Americans dislike war and military intervention abroad, but they also don’t like our country being humiliated on the world stage… especially by terrorists.

Whether Vance realizes or cares about it, he’s currently the face of that humiliation. And he seems right at home in the role.