Yesterday, Donald Trump admitted that he was a jerk when he promoted JD Vance to sell a resolution for war with Iran. “If it works, I’ll take credit,” Trump said of the peace deal. “If it doesn’t work, I blame JD”
Trump was smiling when he said this, but it wasn’t a joke. Judging by the message from across the Republican Party, letting the president claim victory while making the vice president lose is clearly a GOP strategy.
The administration’s Plan A is to claim the war was a complete success—10/10, no tip, would pay again. Few hawks have been willing to repeat this line. The basic argument is that the bombing set back Iran’s conventional and nuclear military capabilities enough to justify the cost to the United States. “The reality is that the missile program is in shambles, just like the nuclear weapons program,” said conservative radio host Hugh Hewitt. recommended.
This estimate ignores minor details, such as the fact that Iran’s missile program is far from in ruins. US intelligence reports estimated last month that Iran has retained 70 percent of its missiles and launchers, and has returned 30 of its 33 missile sites. Trump himself now argues that Iran must retain ballistic missiles as a matter of right. (“They have to have some,” he said yesterday, “because other people have.”) Additionally, Trump’s deal would finally give Iran new sources of revenue by lifting decades of economic sanctions, as well as providing hundreds of billions of dollars in what Iran calls reparations. The money will eventually allow Tehran to build its military capabilities beyond current levels.
Regarding Iran’s nuclear program, if it is they were in the ruins, which would be mainly due to the bombings that happened last year; external experts believe me that the most recent war caused little damage to the plan. In any case, ruins it seems excessive. Iran’s nuclear material is buried underground but can be recovered, and its ability to deter attacks by threatening the Strait of Hormuz will allow it to restore the program over time. This is exactly why the Iran hawks have been insisting for months – even as Vance reported expressed doubts about total war– that continued military action was necessary.
After claiming that Iran’s missile and nuclear efforts are potential threats to US interests, many hawks will have trouble calling a deal that abandons the program a major victory. Republicans who have too much self-respect to turn themselves naked have a fallback plan: they pretend Vance failed.
“Conservatives on the Hill are shocked that Vance would erase all of Trump’s military victories in such a bad deal. Trump won an 11th-hour battle Vance is negotiating his way to losing,” one unnamed Republican told NewsNation. Kellie Meyer. Conservative spokesman Ben Shapiro complained, “The vice president of the United States, the chief negotiator of this particular project, has not served the president well.” On Fox News, Brian Kilmeade tries he suggested“I wonder if the vice president, who was opposing this, by all reports was against the conflict to begin with, maybe he wasn’t the right person to end this conflict.”
But why would Trump authorize his vice president to make unnecessary concessions? Why, indeed, would a supposedly great orator leave such an important conversation to Vance at all? (Kilmeade explained that Trump “has so many dishes in the air that he can’t explain every detail,” as if he’s paying close attention to the color of the Reflecting Pool is a more important use of the president’s time than avoiding a geopolitical disaster).
If the logic here is flawed, it makes political sense for Republican hawks who want to elevate Secretary of State Marco Rubio as Trump’s successor. The war they supported has ended in failure, but they do not want the anti-intervention wing of the party to benefit. So their plan is to blame Vance, who opposed the Iran war all along, for the failure, while shielding Rubio, who is said to favor the conflict, from the outcome. The main opponent of starting a war becomes a sap tasked with promoting the terms of public surrender.
Vance is betting that many Republicans will favor his version of the story, which portrays the Iran war as the latest Trump victory in an unbroken string of victories that stretches from the biggest landslides in American history to turning the Reflecting Pool blue again. “To have little faith in the president of the United States,” he said at a press conference today, “the idea that he will make an agreement that is bad for the American people, is ridiculous.”
A good conservative movement would be able to admit mistakes, instead of using the choose-your-own-adventure trick where the war is Trump’s if we win and Vance’s if we lose. But the movement is so corrupted that analysis of the truth is impossible, and prominent Republicans don’t bother to pretend otherwise.
When details of the settlement agreement were first leaked, Senator Lindsey Graham expressed dismay. Graham has held high-profile views for decades, and has repeatedly let Trump down in an apparent effort to maintain his ability to push the president into office. When a reporter informed Trump this week of Graham’s concerns, the president didn’t even bother to show his anger.
“Lindsey has doubts? I’m going to have to talk to Lindsey,” Trump said. “She’s going to be in big trouble. Lindsey’s fine. Lindsey’s fine. No doubt. She’s fine.” Indeed, as Trump expected, Graham has swallowed his objections and to be praised the program as “important” and “appropriate.”
On some level, GOP hawks understand that their real conflict is with the president, not Vance. “A source close to the president” told it New York Post that “JD is just an agent to attack him (Trump), because they can’t do that.” If Republicans want to examine how their party got itself into such a terrible war, a personal cult around the blunderer-in-chief might be a good place to start.
