Vice President JD Vance, who has long been considered a potential successor to President Donald Trump, could face political problems in 2028 as a result of the Iran war, according to a new report.
People close to Vance told The Washington Post that if the conflict with Iran lasts for months, it could pose a political problem for whoever secures the Republican presidential nomination in 2028. However, Vance still hasn’t decided whether he’ll run, the outlet’s sources also said.
The vice president has publicly voiced his support for Trump’s war with Iran. While Vance has previously criticized prolonged foreign involvement, he’s also pushed back on suggestions that his past comments indicate he’s not aligned with the president.
“I know what you’re trying to do,” Vance said Monday, when confronted about his previous statements on American interventionism.
“You’re trying to drive a wedge between members of the administration, between me and the president. What the president has said consistently, going back to 2015, and I agreed with him, is that Iran should not have a nuclear weapon,” he added.
Still, the president has said Vance was “maybe less enthusiastic” at the beginning of the conflict.
“We get along very well on this,” Trump told reporters last week. “He was, I would say, philosophically a little bit different than me. I think he was maybe less enthusiastic about going, but he was quite enthusiastic.”
“But I felt it was something we had to do. I didn’t feel we had a choice,” he continued. “If we didn’t do it, they would have done it to us.”
Vance also reportedly met with Joe Kent, the former director of the National Counterterrorism Center, who resigned over the war with Iran. The vice president urged him to “go quietly” and not make his resignation a “big thing,” a U.S. official told The Washington Post.
The Independent has contacted Vance’s office for comment.
This comes after Politico reported that Vance privately expressed skepticism about the U.S. attacking Iran before Trump made his final decision. Still, the Trump administration has maintained that the two men are aligned on the issue.
White House spokesperson Anna Kelly previously told The Independent that “efforts to drive a wedge between President Trump and Vice President Vance are totally misguided.” Vance spokesperson Taylor Van Kirk told Politico the vice president is “a proud member of the President’s national security team” and “keeps his counsel to the President private.”
Others have also speculated about the conflict’s impact on the 2028 election, including Marjorie Taylor Greene, a former Republican lawmaker who resigned from her House seat late last year after a public falling-out with Trump.
When asked by CNN’s Pamela Brown if the Iran war could hurt the vice president’s chances of becoming Trump’s successor, the ex-lawmaker replied: “The longer it goes on, it definitely does hurt JD Vance.”
