As the United States and Iran returned to the negotiating table in Switzerland, the broader goal was obvious: turn a pause in the war into a sustainable policy, building on the memorandum of understanding that the two countries endorsed last week. To that end, JD Vance — whose last attempts at diplomacy amounted to nothing — was on hand for the talks, and the vice president was joined by a team of White House envoys.

Whether the Ohio Republican is the best person to help oversee the delicate process is a subject of some debate.

Even if we put aside the inconvenient fact that Vance is a young and inexperienced politician with no background in diplomacy or international affairs, there are broader questions about his competence. During a Fox News interview last week, for example, before the White House shared the contents of the MOU framework, the vice president was asked why the administration was reluctant to release the document.

He replied that there was “some diplomatic procedure,” though he conceded, “I don’t understand it.” On Saturday morning, before departing for Switzerland, he returned to Fox News and was asked about his planned interactions with Donald Trump’s other dubious diplomats, Jared Kushner and Steve Witkoff. “I’ve got to be honest with you, I don’t really understand these things,” Vance said. “I’ve never been particularly into diplomatic protocols.”

The vice president’s candor about his ignorance was welcome, though it did not inspire confidence.

Making matters significantly worse, there are other elements of the discussion that Vance says he does understand but that have fallen apart under routine scrutiny. The New York Times reported:

Vice President JD Vance on Thursday defended the preliminary deal to stop the war with Iran as a “win for the American people.” But he relied in part on a string of aspirational, vague and misleading claims about the agreement.

Indeed, this problem intensified over the past week. Seven days ago, for example, Vance said details surrounding the destruction of Iran’s enriched uranium stockpile are “spelled out very clearly” in the deal that Donald Trump announced a day earlier. That wasn’t true: The MOU includes no such provisions.

Even after the claim had been discredited, the vice president repeated it anyway.

On Thursday, the Ohio Republican also insisted that the Obama-era Iran deal (the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action, or JCPOA) gave Iranians “over a billion dollars of American money.” That wasn’t true, either: The actual total was zero.

In other words, as the diplomatic process slowly advances, the official overseeing the United States’ role is an inexperienced vice president with a worrisome track record, who admits he’s “never been particularly into diplomatic protocols,” and who, on too many occasions, has presented the public with factual claims that were wrong.

It’s against this backdrop that his boss continues to make new threats, telling Fox News that he had spoken to Iranian officials on Saturday night and warned them not to close the Strait of Hormuz, which the White House claims is under U.S. control.

“You close it, and you won’t have a country,” Trump claimed he told Iranian officials, referring to the strait. The American president added, “You won’t even make it back to your f–––ing country. We may take over the strait, if we have to. If they don’t make a deal, we’ll collect tolls. I’ll blow the s––– out of them.”

The trouble is, Trump’s credibility is about as horrible as Vance’s, if not worse: The president has made a series of related threats, only to back down later because, by all appearances, he doesn’t actually want to restart combat operations. Watch this space.

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