Trump says Vance was philosophically different on Iran while downplaying split
President Donald Trump said his vice president, JD Vance, was “philosophically a little bit different than me” at the outset of the war in Iran, even as he dismissed the notion of a disagreement between the two.
Speaking to reporters at his golf club in Doral, Florida, the president said Vance was “maybe less enthusiastic about going” but insisted that his decision to launch airstrikes in Iran alongside Israel was necessary. “I felt it was something we had to do,” Trump said. “I did not feel we had a choice.” Heading into a challenging election year, the war in Iran has stoked tension among Republicans, with some expressing reservations about how the operation fits into the “America First”, isolationist-leaning movement the party has embraced during the Trump era.
Few have embodied that movement as prominently as Vance, who over the course of a decade rose from an author to US senator and ultimately vice president. He is now considered a top contender for the Republican presidential nomination in 2028, giving him the opportunity to carry Trump’s movement into the future.
In a 2023 op-ed in The Wall Street Journal that has garnered renewed attention after the Iran strikes, Vance wrote that Trump has his support because “I know he won’t recklessly send Americans to fight overseas”.
On the eve of the strikes, Vance told The Washington Post there was “no chance” that the US would become involved in a drawn-out war as it did in Iraq.
