JD Vance is being sent by Donald Trump on a peace mission he cannot win.
The vice president is reportedly heading to Pakistan to lead the U.S. peace talks with Iran in a bid to end the 25-day conflict.
With his approval ratings plummeting, gas prices rising, and the continuing stalemate in the Strait of Hormuz, Trump is looking for a way out.
There appear to be two avenues open to him right now. One is to find a way to back out while claiming a triumph of obliteration on a historical scale. The other is to double down and go for broke.
Either way, he needs someone to blame.
The Iranians are said to be more comfortable dealing with Vance than Trump’s special envoys Steve Witkoff and Jared Kushner, accusing them of “backstabbing.”
But the mission impossible that he cannot refuse sends anti-interventionist Vance out of his comfort zone.
He has managed to tap dance around his reservations about the U.S. being involved in another foreign war by tying his comments to his boss. Basically, he says he’s a loyal lieutenant, and it’s his duty to support the commander-in-chief.
By sending him to Pakistan, Trump is putting Vance center stage—and he is setting him up to fail.
If by some miracle, he manages to find common ground with Tehran while allowing Trump to claim absolute victory, he will be the man who called it quits in the war while leaving the fundamentalist regime battered but intact.
The hawkish wing of MAGA, such as Lindsey Graham, will turn their ire on Vance.
The more likely outcome is that the “peace talks”—if, indeed, they go ahead—will result in both sides throwing their toys out of the pram and a major escalation in hostilities.
Speaking on Wednesday, White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt pledged that the president would “unleash hell” if his demands were not met.
The blood from the fragile olive branch Trump is handing to Vance would then be on the vice president’s hands.
And the America First MAGA faithful that Vance has been courting for years, with a view to them driving him to the presidency, would hold him responsible.
It is, in many ways, a masterful political move by the president to offload the divisions that are ripping MAGA apart onto his second-in-command.
In sporting parlance, it’s a hospital pass—a phrase used in football to describe a pass putting the receiver in a dangerous position, so bad the resulting collision is severe enough to cause injuries that require a hospital visit. It’s an option the vice president has no choice but to accept, but it will come with a whole heap of pain.
Even worse for Vance, it could allow Marco Rubio, his biggest competitor for the Republican ticket in 2028, to stay under the radar and wait to see how the MAGA wind blows.
The vice president will be the war’s fall guy.
And Rubio will keep on rising.
