Vice President JD Vance privately opposed the U.S. war with Iran. Now, he’s the public face of selling its result as a win — even as critics across the political spectrum characterize it as a capitulation.

The vice president emerged from negotiations in Switzerland on Monday touting a measure of success: Iran’s reported agreement to allow U.N. nuclear inspectors back into the country. But virtually all of the larger, pricklier items — including the future of Iran’s nuclear program — were left for future talks.

The choice of Vance, an anti-interventionist with limited high-level foreign policy experience, as the lead negotiator and defender of the 14-point interim memorandum of understanding surprised some inside the White House and its orbit. One White House official, who was granted anonymity to speak openly about internal dynamics, said Secretary of State Marco Rubio, the nation’s top diplomat, avoided becoming the face of the deal because he understood how unlikely it was to succeed. Vance, by contrast, believes a triumphant deal with Iran is not out of reach, the official told MS NOW.

Vance was adamantly against the conflict from the start, according to multiple current and former U.S. officials and people close to the administration who spoke with MS NOW. But with months of high gas prices driven by the war endangering Republicans in the midterm elections, Trump wants out more than ever before.

But that doesn’t mean Trump is making his vice president’s job easy. 

As Vance kicked off negotiations in Switzerland on Sunday — proposing that the U.S. and Iran turn a “new leaf” and begin “transforming our relationship” — Trump almost simultaneously posted to Truth Social that the U.S. would “hit Iran very hard again” if the regime didn’t stop its proxies in Lebanon from “causing trouble.” That post caused Iranian leaders to threaten to walk out of negotiations altogether. 

To some who have watched the process, the threat was of a piece with a deeper failure. Two former senior national security officials, who were granted anonymity to speak about sensitive issues, suggested to MS NOW that the Trump administration has failed in Iran for two reasons: a fundamental misunderstanding of the Iranian regime and a closed-off policymaking process in which Trump makes decisions with a small number of aides while regional experts are largely excluded.

“Almost all important decisions are primarily top-down,” said a former senior administration official. “There was a more robust decision-making process in the first Trump administration. It’s very different from probably all former presidents.” 

The former senior official called the interim MOU that Trump and Vance are defending a “complete capitulation” to Iran and dismissed Trump’s praise of it. 

“That’s just salesmanship,” the official said. “That’s putting lipstick on a very ugly pig.”

Vance’s public claim that Iran’s current leaders differ from their predecessors, the official added, is either an attempt to mislead Americans or a sign of naivety about Tehran.

“His instincts on foreign policy are reminiscent of pre-World War II isolationist Republicans who thought we could manage our relationship with European fascists,” the official said of Vance. 

“Whoever thinks that this historic moment was insignificant are the same people who want to drag America into forever wars around the world,” a Vance spokesperson said in response to a request for comment.

Another White House official, who was granted anonymity because they lacked authorization to speak with the press, argued that Vance was the wrong choice to front the negotiations because the people most in need of convincing about a peace deal share Rubio’s views on foreign policy — a group which, the official argued, is most dissatisfied with the current MOU.

“I wouldn’t have the vice president, because the chief critics of this argument are not coming from Vance’s base, but from Rubio’s,” the White House official said. “If I’m trying to sell this deal, I’m thinking, ‘Who are my greatest critics?’ It’s not the people who oppose the war; it’s the people who actually supported it.”

It was not the week Vance had planned. He was supposed to be on a book tour promoting “Communion: Finding My Way Back to Faith,” a memoir-treatise whose tone winks ahead to 2028 amid persistent speculation about his presidential ambitions. Instead, he spent much of the media tour for his book defending the memorandum, which drew bipartisan backlash on several points.

Inside the room

For Vance, the summit was a vivid reminder that being the face of a negotiation is not the same as controlling it. 

The vice president arrived in Switzerland ahead of most delegations, huddling for hours with Steve Witkoff and Jared Kushner before plunging into a series of bilateral meetings. The most notable came with Pakistani Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif and Field Marshal Asim Munir, whose roles as intermediaries have elevated Islamabad’s importance in the process. The exchanges were cordial if slightly awkward, punctuated by hugs and repeated expressions of gratitude by Vance for Pakistan’s efforts. The limits of American influence became clear hours later. 

At what was supposed to be a historic photo opportunity with all four nations, the Iranian delegation refused to stand alongside the vice president — a seemingly pointed snub aimed at the representative of a government Tehran blames for bringing death and destruction inside Iran. 

As Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi spoke to Sharif, apparently informing him of the decision, Vance watched intently from several feet away, his expression hardening as the conversation unfolded, according to video of the moment.

When the Pakistani officials relayed the message, the vice president appeared momentarily bewildered, apparently seeking clarification from both Sharif and Munir. It was an unusually unscripted and spontaneous diplomatic moment. America’s lead negotiator was left to navigate a reality in which Tehran was willing to sit across the table from Washington away from the cameras but not yet willing to be seen standing beside it. 

Vance later said he did not feel snubbed by the moment, but he said he sometimes finds the Iranians “extremely confusing as negotiators.”

Much of what Vance achieved in Switzerland was procedural. Committees were formed, communication channels were established and a roadmap was drafted for future talks. The substance — Iran’s nuclear program chief among it — was left for another day. The discussions were “constructive but tense,” according to one person familiar with them, with much of the progress centered on procedure rather than terms. And the fragile architecture Vance assembled remains vulnerable to the same force that nearly upended it in real time: a president thousands of miles away who can rewrite the terms with a single post.

The post ‘Lipstick on a very ugly pig’: Inside Vance’s hard sell on Iran appeared first on MS NOW.

From MS Now.