VP Doing the Most To Sell Trump’s Iran War? Pence, Not Vance

The vice president is suddenly everywhere as he makes the case for war with Iran.

Mike Pence makes the casus belli

He told CNN that “history will record” that it was the right decision to take out Ayatollah Khamenei and said on CNBC that it was time for the United States to “finish the war” that Iran started nearly half-a-century ago. He praised on Fox News the “decisive leadership” of President Trump and condemned on Newsmax an Iranian regime that “openly advocates another holocaust.”

In the last 10 days, Mike Pence has emerged as one of the staunchest defenders of both Trump’s attacks on Iran and a more muscular conservative foreign policy that previously defined the GOP.

Vice President JD Vance, by comparison, has kept a lower profile.

Vance made his initial public comments on the third day of hostilities during an interview with Jesse Watters of Fox News. It is the most-watched show in all of prime-time news, and the vice president was the first member of the Cabinet to address the nation. He argued that the attack on Iran differed from the War on Terror because “the president has clearly defined what he wants to accomplish,” namely, preventing Iran from obtaining a nuclear weapon.

A week later, during remarks to the International Association of Firefighters, Vance made his second public remarks, calling for “a moment of prayer for our brothers in arms.”

Vance has stayed behind the scenes

His role otherwise has remained mostly behind the scenes. The White House released a photo of the vice president monitoring the strikes from the Situation Room during the first wave of air strikes. A former Marine, Vance later attended the dignified transfer of six fallen U.S. service members at Dover Air Force Base.

“The entire national security team, including the Vice President, have been constantly engaged in active deliberations surrounding the operations in Iran,” Taylor Van Kirk, a Vance spokeswoman, told RealClearPolitics.

It comes as some of Vance’s staunchest allies cast a critical eye on the administration, alleging that the current argument for war contradicts his past opposition to it.

Some, like conservative writer Rod Dreher, have expressed skepticism. Others, like Tucker Carlson, who called the attacks “disgusting and evil,” have denounced the operation entirely. Sohrab Amari, a post-liberal conservative and close friend of the vice president, summarized the emerging consensus among anti-interventionists when he wrote that Vance had “lost the foreign policy war.”

Vance was once a severe critic of neocons

Vance built a reputation prior to the vice presidency as a critic of neoconservatism and regime change wars. When Trump picked him as his running mate, allies heralded him as the vanguard of a New Right who would solidify Republican opposition to war. And while Vance echoed Trump’s vow that Iran must never obtain a nuclear weapon, he repeatedly stressed during the campaign that a war ought to be avoided because it would be “a huge distraction of resources” and “massively expensive to our country.”

Despite that past opposition, Trump said it did not take much to get Vance on board with the new war, telling RCP during a brief interview last week that his vice president “did not take persuading.”

As heir-apparent to the president, the reversal, or perhaps evolution, could be a political liability, especially among younger male Republicans who are generally distrustful of foreign intervention. Notably, many of the podcast hosts the Trump campaign courted during the previous election, such as Joe Rogan and Andrew Schulz, have since soured on the administration.

Trump has not shied away from the spotlight even as polling shows more voters disapprove, 49.2%, than approve, 43.1%, of military action against Iran. He has released recorded remarks explaining his reasons for the strikes, addressed the war publicly, and taken calls from dozens of reporters since American munitions began raining down on Tehran.

Pence playing the traditional VP role

A Vance spokesperson bristled at the suggestion that the VP was keeping his head down during the early days of the conflict. “The premise of this story is ridiculous and false. The vice president hasn’t been keeping a low profile,” the spokesperson said before pointing to his attendance at the dignified transfer, his primetime interview on Fox News, and his Iran remarks during a Monday speech.

Past vice presidents have often served as the de facto attack dogs of their administrations. Vance did not always rush to the spotlight before the war in Iran. The month before the attacks, he gave just three news interviews and made three speeches at the March for Life in D.C., in Minnesota, and in Ohio.

That previous schedule has not stopped some on the right from noticing that Pence, not Vance, is blitzing the airwaves for Trump and taking it as further evidence that an older, more interventionist foreign policy is ascendant.

“The fact that Mike Pence is more on board with Donald Trump in 2026 than JD Vance is just wild,” said one Republican operative who worked closely with the Trump-Vance campaign. They noted that after Jan. 6, Pence remains “a deeply flawed messenger” for MAGA and his support may not sway some Republicans, “but directionally, it is accurate to say that he is in line with where Republican voters are right now.” They concluded that for the time being, “Vance is smart to keep his mouth shut.”

Disputing Vance’ low profile

Longtime Trump adviser Jason Miller, who worked on all three of the president’s campaigns, dismissed that characterization while insisting that “communicating a war effort is a very precise thing.” No one is hiding from the cameras, he added, instead a coordinated communications plan is keeping principles within their area of responsibility and out of “other people’s lanes.”

The public has learned about the military operations through regular briefings by War Secretary Pete Hegseth, while Secretary of State Marco Rubio has broadly addressed the reasons for the conflict itself. Individual Cabinet members, like Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent and Energy Secretary Chris Wright, have been deployed to speak to their distinct areas of responsibility.

The current strategy reflects a mature administration, Miller said, noting that if a war with Iran had started during the first Trump term, “you would have had 10 people fighting each other to try and do TV hits, even if they didn’t know anything about what’s going on.” The current Cabinet and VP are more disciplined by contrast, he said. “They’re executing the game plan in a way that benefits the president and benefits the United States. I’d much rather have the question I’m getting from you rather than ‘why is this person on TV every five minutes?’”

Pence supports the most cogent argument for casus belli

Ambassador to the United Nations Mike Waltz made the sale to the public on the Sunday shows this past weekend. Pressed by Kristin Welker of NBC News on “Meet the Press” to say whether the U.S. is at war, the ambassador shot back that “Iran has been at war with us.” The former Green Beret pressed the case during a separate interview on ABC News with Martha Raddatz that the U.S. is already winning the war: “We are not only ahead of schedule, we are winning.”

Though exiled from Trump World, Pence has lent his support to the argument. Writing in the Washington Examiner, the former vice president heralded his old boss for ensuring that “justice arrives for Tehran’s terrorism.” The two still have not spoken since their very public divorce after the 2020 election. All the same, the assist has earned Pence plaudits among Trump-friendly conservatives.

“It’s pretty notable that former Vice President Mike Pence has been on both CNN and Fox News providing a more articulate and coherent defense of President Trump’s operation in Iran than many of the regular Trump surrogates,” said conservative talk show host Erick Erickson. Albeit, he added, with one exception: Secretary of State Marco Rubio.

This article was originally published by RealClearPolitics and made available via RealClearWire.