{"id":166514,"date":"2026-06-18T15:37:20","date_gmt":"2026-06-18T15:37:20","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/166514\/"},"modified":"2026-06-18T15:37:20","modified_gmt":"2026-06-18T15:37:20","slug":"rubio-lets-vance-take-the-fall-as-iran-deal-questions-mount","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/166514\/","title":{"rendered":"Rubio lets Vance take the fall as Iran deal questions mount"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

WASHINGTON\u00a0\u2014\u00a0Secretary of State Marco Rubio stood silent and stone-faced behind Donald Trump on Wednesday as the president joked of passing the buck if his deal with Iran<\/a>, under increasingly withering criticism and scrutiny, ultimately falls apart.<\/p>\n

The blame, Trump said, would likely fall on his vice president, JD Vance,<\/a> who led the negotiations toward a memorandum of understanding with Iran and will sign the agreement this week in Switzerland \u2014 a ceremony that will generate indelible images for a politician openly considering a run for the White House.<\/p>\n

The controversial diplomatic breakthrough poses a quandary for Vance, whose aides see Rubio as his most viable challenger for the Republican presidential nomination should the secretary choose to run.<\/p>\n

\u201cIf it works out, I\u2019m going to take the credit,\u201d Trump said of the Iran deal, with Rubio by his side. <\/p>\n

\u201cIf it doesn\u2019t work out, I\u2019m blaming JD,\u201d he joked. \u201cYou better be careful, JD!\u201d<\/p>\n

Silent secretary<\/p>\n

Rubio, who also serves as the president\u2019s national security advisor, has remained effectively mum since news of a preliminary peace deal was announced by the administration on Sunday.<\/p>\n

His absence has drawn notice across foreign policy circles \u2014 not only because Rubio has served as chief architect of the administration\u2019s global strategy thus far, but also because he has become one of the president\u2019s most effective communicators, both at home and abroad.<\/p>\n

By contrast, Vance, on a scheduled press tour promoting his new book, has emerged as the face of an agreement that appears to be fracturing a Republican Party already divided over America\u2019s role in the world.<\/p>\n

The administration\u2019s internal divide over Iran extends beyond the war to broader U.S. support for its historic allies, including Israel in the Middle East, Canada and Mexico in this hemisphere, and Ukraine and Europe against a revanchist Russia.<\/p>\n

\u201cRubio has always been a hawk on Iran, and Vance has always been an appeaser,\u201d said Danielle Pletka, a senior fellow at the American Enterprise Institute, describing the vice president as positioning himself \u201cas Trump without the flaws.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cRubio has a harder job because he\u2019s more of a traditional Republican,\u201d she said, adding that a competitive presidential run by the secretary might require him to pitch \u201ca return to normalcy.\u201d<\/p>\n

No guarantee of success<\/p>\n

Behind closed doors, Rubio advocated against the deal in its current form, citing intelligence reports that found it highly unlikely Tehran would give up its nuclear ambitions, according to two sources familiar with the matter. Rubio\u2019s internal skepticism was first reported by Axios.<\/p>\n

The deal kicks down the road highly technical discussions over the mechanics of unwinding Iran\u2019s nuclear program \u2014 with no guarantee of success \u2014 while granting Tehran immediate relief, lifting a U.S. naval blockade of Iranian ports that will allow Iranian imports and exports to resume.<\/p>\n

In exchange, Iran has only agreed in principle not to pursue nuclear weapons \u2014 a vow it has made multiple times before \u2014 and to do its \u201cbest\u201d to return commercial shipping traffic through the Strait of Hormuz back to prewar levels. It commits in the deal to refrain from implementing a toll system in the strait, according to U.S. officials, for a mere 60-day period.<\/p>\n

\u201cThis agreement is a road map for Iran to become a rising, stronger power in the [Persian] Gulf \u2014 stronger than it is even today,\u201d said Robert Pape, a political science professor at the University of Chicago.<\/p>\n

\u201cThat is going to be an issue for the balance of power with Israel, which before the Iran war was the rising power. Now it\u2019s lost that paradigm,\u201d Pape said. \u201cAnd this is going to be an issue with the future disposition of American forces in the region, because the [memorandum of understanding] states quite clearly that Iran is expecting those forces to withdraw.\u201d<\/p>\n

Positioning by the vice president<\/p>\n

Despite mounting skepticism, Vance has embraced his role in ending a war that a powerful faction of Trump\u2019s base aggressively opposed from the start.<\/p>\n

\u201cI think there are some people who just want the bombing to continue, regardless of whether it accomplishes anything for Americans,\u201d Vance told CBS News on Wednesday.<\/p>\n

\u201cI do think there are people,\u201d he added, \u201cwho sometimes confuse the ends with the means.\u201d<\/p>\n

Because the preliminary Iran deal leaves key details unresolved, further negotiations virtually ensure the agreement remains in flux through the election season \u2014 potentially thrusting the talks into the center of the presidential primary campaign.<\/p>\n

\u201cGiven the distance between the parties on the core nuclear issues, as well as the Trump administration\u2019s poor track record with coercive diplomacy, I fully expect the 60-day window for talks to be extended, as the [memorandum of understanding] text permits, taking this issue to the heart of the midterms and beyond,\u201d said Reid Pauly, a professor of nuclear security and policy at Brown University. <\/p>\n

\u201cThere will be a lot of incentive in the administration,\u201d Pauly added, \u201cto distance oneself from this fiasco.\u201d<\/p>\n

As a guest on Megyn Kelly\u2019s podcast this week, Vance acknowledged the political realities of Trump\u2019s base splintering over the Iran war, noting that a coalition of isolationists \u2014 as well as those advocating what he called a more \u201caggressive\u201d foreign policy \u2014 had together swept Trump back into office.<\/p>\n

The war may be breaking that coalition apart, he said.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe have a constituency right now that is saying, we\u2019re going to send boots on the ground \u2014 they want Donald Trump to send hundreds of thousands of ground troops into Iran,\u201d Vance told the former Fox News host.<\/p>\n

\u201cThose are Republicans,\u201d Kelly said.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe need people to be pushing back from inside the tent,\u201d Vance replied.<\/p>\n

What else you should be reading<\/p>\n

The must-read: He graduated high school with honors. ICE detained him the next day<\/a>
The deep dive: What we know about two SoCal men arrested in alleged plot to attack White House UFC fight<\/a>
The L.A. Times Special: L.A. defies the skeptics for a World Cup marked by unity, mutual respect, fearlessness<\/a><\/p>\n

More to come,
Michael Wilner
\u2014
Was this newsletter forwarded to you? Sign up here<\/a> to get it in your inbox. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"WASHINGTON\u00a0\u2014\u00a0Secretary of State Marco Rubio stood silent and stone-faced behind Donald Trump on Wednesday as the president joked…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":166515,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_share_on_mastodon":"0"},"categories":[3],"tags":[468,22864,22862,22865,22861,8651,2336,34,22869,10111,22868,22867,22863,22866,10880,7125],"class_list":["post-166514","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-iran","tag-biden","tag-court-pick","tag-essential-politics","tag-first-black-woman","tag-gender","tag-high-court","tag-history","tag-iran","tag-jefferson","tag-media-coverage","tag-nominee","tag-political-criticism","tag-race","tag-stereotypes","tag-supreme-court","tag-women"],"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@iran\/116771857613635972","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/166514","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=166514"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/166514\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/166515"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=166514"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=166514"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=166514"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}