Trump put Vance in charge of Iran peace talks. He’s now quizzing people on his vice president’s performance

By Kristen Holmes, Kevin Liptak, CNN

(CNN) — With Vice President JD Vance, a one-time Iran war skeptic, now tasked with brokering a deal to end it, President Donald Trump has been monitoring his progress closely and inquiring with various friends and advisers how they’d rank his performance, according to three people familiar with the conversations.

The president has wondered aloud how they think Vance compares to Secretary of State Marco Rubio, a potential rival for the 2028 Republican presidential nomination, these people said.

Never over the course of Trump’s second term has his second-in-command been more in the spotlight than in the past week, when a pair of foreign visits and a dust-up between the president and the leader of the world’s Catholics — of which Vance is one — placed him squarely at the center of Trump’s whirlwind.

For now, Trump seems to have full confidence in Vance’s negotiating abilities, with the vice president on standby to return to Pakistan to resume negotiations with Iran if a deal appears to be coming together, according to sources familiar with the talks.

But the president, who spoke by phone with Vance as many as a dozen times during the first round of talks in Islamabad last weekend, has made clear he’s watching carefully.

“If it doesn’t happen, I’m blaming JD Vance,” Trump said, somewhat in jest, of an Iran deal during an Easter lunch this month. “If it does happen, I’m taking full credit.”

As momentum builds for another round of talks with Iran, the White House voiced full support for Vance’s role.

“Vice President Vance continues to show why President Trump has tapped him to lead the Iran negotiations along with Steve Witkoff and Jared Kushner. His ability to take on some of the biggest challenges head-on makes him an invaluable member of the Administration full of top performers,” White House communications director Steven Cheung said in a statement. Cheung traveled to Pakistan with Vance last weekend.

Navigating the fray poses a challenge for Vance. The staunch Trump loyalist has publicly defended a war he argued against in private, and backed Trump’s criticism of Pope Leo XIV, even amid outcry from some of his fellow Catholics.

Yet on both fronts, Vance has also offered positions that — while not at odds with his boss — allow for a degree of distinction.

Confronted by hecklers decrying the administration’s Middle East policy at a Turning Point USA event in Georgia this week, Vance deflected the criticism onto the Biden administration. But later in the event, he acknowledged the Iran war’s unpopularity.

“I recognize that young voters do not love the policy we have in the Middle East,” he told the half-empty arena. “I understand.”

In the lead-up to last weekend’s marathon talks with Iran in Pakistan, Vance downplayed his role in the negotiations as merely “answering a lot of phone calls.”

Yet when Trump convened a Cabinet meeting on March 26, it was Vance he turned to first for an update on the war, not his secretaries of state or defense. By then, the vice president had been in regular contact with Pakistan’s army chief, Field Marshal Asim Munir, to work through proposals to bring the hostilities to an end.

At the time of the Cabinet meeting, Vance’s initial hesitation about launching a new foreign war was well known. Trump had even acknowledged it, shrugging it off as a minor difference in viewpoint.

“He was, I would say, philosophically a little bit different than me,” Trump explained in early March. “I think he was maybe less enthusiastic about going, but he was quite enthusiastic.”

Still, some Trump allies say they have been watching carefully for signs of Vance placing any daylight between himself and the president, on Iran or other issues that have caused consternation among some conservatives.

At the event in Georgia this week, Vance was pressed on Trump’s spat with the pope, which many Christians, Republicans and even vocal Trump supporters have pushed back on.

“I have a lot of respect for the pope. I like him. I admire him. I’ve gotten to know him a little bit,” Vance, soon to release a book about finding his Catholic faith, said. “It doesn’t bother me when he speaks on issues of the day, frankly, even when I disagree with how he’s applying particular principles.”

If it was a milder approach to the pontiff than Trump, who was clearly bothered by Leo’s criticism of the Iran war and his immigration policy, it also came with a warning: “I think it’s very, very important for the pope to be careful when he talks about matters of theology,” Vance said, drawing questions even from fellow Republicans.

“When he talks about matters of theology? Isn’t that his job?” a puzzled Senate Majority Leader John Thune asked a day after. He suggested the Trump administration drop its ongoing disagreement with the pontiff, which could offend Catholic Republicans and other GOP voters.

“I’d stay focused,” Thune said, “on economic issues – the pocketbook issues that I think most Americans care about and let the church be the church.”

Economic issues are exactly what Vance and the rest of the White House once thought they would be focused on this year, as midterm elections approach and voters express unease about the cost of living.

The Iran war, and subsequent rising gas prices, has only exacerbated many of the concerns. But the administration’s attempts to shift focus back toward domestic matters have been halting. Vance, who had not carried out many high-profile foreign policy assignments for the administration before now, found himself flying abroad twice in the last week on missions that yielded disappointing results.

After an overnight flight, a day of meetings and a campaign rally for embattled Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban, Vance returned to his lodgings in Budapest last Tuesday and worked late into the night trying to bring a two-week ceasefire agreement with Iran across the finish line.

“I was up very late last night talking about that,” he admitted last Wednesday, after arriving a few minutes behind schedule to address a room of university students.

While the ceasefire staved off Trump’s promise to wipe out Iran’s entire civilization, Vance’s subsequent 52-hour trip to Pakistan failed to produce a final agreement ending the war.

And as he was flying home, it became clear his late foray into Hungary’s election did not yield the result he and Trump were hoping for.

Vance framed Orban’s decisive loss as expected and said the trip was still worthwhile.

“We didn’t go because we expected Viktor Orban to cruise to an election victory,” Vance said during an interview on Fox News. “We went because it was the right thing to do to stand behind a person who had stood by us for a very long time.”

Still, the decision to insert himself so directly into a foreign campaign that, by his own admission, was headed toward defeat will do little to quiet questions about the ability of Vance — and by extension, Trump — to sway voters, in Hungary or the United States.

Now at record-low approval ratings, both men see ending the Iran war as an imperative to boosting Republicans’ flagging fortunes in the midterm elections, according to people familiar.

Speaking in Georgia, Vance didn’t detail his own misgivings about the war or his long-held opposition to starting foreign conflicts. Instead, he encouraged young disillusioned Trump supporters to focus on other areas of the president’s record.

“I’m not saying you to have to agree with me on every issue,” he said.

“What I am saying is: Don’t get disengaged because you disagree with the administration on one topic. Get more involved, make your voice heard even more. That is how we ultimately take the country back.”

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