WASHINGTON (AP) — U.S. Vice President JD Vance warned Iran on Friday not to “play games” with the United States before traveling to Iran for talks aimed at ending the war.
President Donald Trump has tasked Vance, a member of his inner circle and, it appears, the most reluctant advocate of the conflict with Iran, with finding a way out and averting the US president’s stunning threat to wipe out “an entire civilization.”
Vance, who has long been skeptical of military interventions abroad and openly criticized the prospect of sending troops into conflicts without a clear end in sight, departed Friday to lead mediated talks with Iran in Islamabad, the Pakistani capital. Boarding Air Force Two for Pakistan, the vice president said, “We are looking forward to the negotiations. I think they will be positive. Of course, we shall see.”
He quoted Trump as saying, “If the Iranians are willing to negotiate in good faith, we are certainly willing to extend an open hand.” But he added, “If they’re going to try to play games with us, then they’ll find that the negotiating team isn’t so receptive.”
Vance also noted that Trump “gave us some pretty clear guidelines” on how the talks should proceed, but he did not elaborate. He did not take questions from reporters traveling with him.
The vice president’s trip comes as a fragile, temporary ceasefire appears to be on the verge of collapse. The chasm between Iran’s public demands and those of the United States and its partner Israel seems insurmountable. And in the United States, where Vance could ask voters to elect him president in two years’ time, political and economic pressure is mounting to end the ceasefire.
Vance is accompanied by Trump’s special envoy, Steve Witkoff, and the president’s son-in-law, Jared Kushner, who participated in three rounds of indirect talks with Iranian negotiators to address U.S. concerns about Tehran’s nuclear and ballistic weapons programs and its support for allied armed groups in the Middle East, before Trump and Israel launched the war against Iran on February 28.
The White House has given few details about the format of the talks —whether they will be direct or indirect— and has not provided specific expectations for the meeting.
But Vance’s arrival at the negotiations marks a rare moment of high-level interaction between the U.S. government and its Iranian counterpart. Since the 1979 Islamic Revolution, the most direct contact had been when President Barack Obama called newly elected Iranian President Hassan Rouhani in September 2013 to discuss Iran’s nuclear program.Both sides face significant challenges in making progress.
Almost immediately after the White House and Iran announced a temporary ceasefire on Tuesday night, both sides showed their disagreement over the terms of the truce.
Iran insisted that ending the Israeli war in Lebanon was part of the ceasefire. But Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Trump stated that the truce did not include Lebanon, and Israeli operations there continued.
The United States, for its part, demanded that Iran comply with the reopening of the Strait of Hormuz. The Islamic Republic had closed this crucial shipping lane in response to Israel’s intensified attacks against the Hezbollah political-military group in Lebanon.
Trump claimed on Thursday that Iran was “doing a very bad job” with authorizing the passage of oil tankers, and wrote on social media: “That is not the deal we have!”
White House spokeswoman Anna Kelly said that Vance, Witkoff, Kushner, and Secretary of State Marco Rubio “have always been cooperative in these talks” and maintained that Trump was optimistic that a lasting agreement could be reached during the two-week ceasefire. “President Trump has a proven track record of securing good deals on behalf of the United States and the American people, and he will only accept one that puts America first,” she said.Much is at stake for peace and for politics
This is the riskiest moment yet for Vance, who spent much of last year more in the background at Trump’s White House, especially as others like Elon Musk and Rubio took turns as omnipresent advisers to the president.
But Vance’s portfolio is expanding rapidly: first with a mission to eradicate fraud in government programs at home and now to help resolve a US war in the Middle East, where the word “complicated” doesn’t even come close to describing the situation.Vance, who served in the Iraq War with the Marines and served two years as a U.S. senator from Ohio and a little over one as vice president, has little diplomatic experience.
On Wednesday, he dismissed speculation that the Iranians had asked him to join the talks, telling reporters: “I don’t know. I would be surprised if that were true. But, you know, I wanted to participate because I thought I could make a difference.”
Jonathan Schanzer, a former Treasury Department official and current executive director of the Foundation for Defense of Democracies, a hardline Washington think tank, said that Vance, with little experience in Iran policy, is an interesting choice to head the delegation.
Trump has indicated that his vice president was “less enthusiastic” than other senior officials in the Republican administration, making him an intriguing interlocutor for the Iranian side, Schanzer said.
“I think they probably prefer it that way, knowing that their view of foreign intervention is one of skepticism,” Schanzer said, referring to the Iranians. “I do think they’re going to need help. I don’t think they’ve ever been involved in negotiations with this weight, with this seriousness. This is as serious as it gets.”
The White House has rejected the characterization that Iran wanted Vance in the talks, and presented it as an attempt to undermine the negotiations.
The White House has not detailed who will participate in the talks besides Vance, Witkoff and Kushner, but Kelly said officials from the National Security Council, the State Department and the Pentagon “will also play a supporting role.”
During the first rounds of indirect nuclear talks with the Iranians before the war, Democrats and some nuclear experts questioned whether Kushner and Witkoff had sufficient technical expertise. The White House has not said whether the two—to whom Trump has entrusted some of his most difficult negotiations since returning to office—had a nuclear expert present during those talks.
Negotiating peace is a huge task for any vice president.
It is not unusual for vice presidents to assume important negotiating roles for the president, said Joel Goldstein, a law professor at Saint Louis University and an expert on the history of the vice presidency.
However, he added: “I don’t recall a situation where a vice president was sent to negotiate a ceasefire or peace in relation to a war in which the United States was involved.”
Vance and Rubio are seen as the strongest Republican presidential hopefuls for 2028, although neither has given a clear answer as to whether they intend to run.
The vice president’s team is not approaching the negotiations with an eye toward future political considerations, according to a person familiar with the talks who was not authorized to speak publicly and spoke on condition of anonymity.
As vice president, Vance would inherently carry any baggage from the administration if he ultimately runs for president, Goldstein said. But stepping in to lead the negotiations further aligns him with the conflict.
“The fact that he is participating in the negotiations in a very visible way means that if things go wrong, people will point the finger at him,” Goldstein said.
At the same time, he added, “If things go well, then it will be something he could point to.”
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This story was translated from English by an AP editor with the help of a generative artificial intelligence tool.
