Vance ‘Maybe Less Enthusiastic’ About Iran War, Trump Says
Elizabeth Troutman Mitchell /
President Donald Trump said Vice President JD Vance was “maybe less enthusiastic” than he was about the start of the operation against Iran.
“We get along very well on this,” Trump said at a press conference in Doral, Florida, on Monday.
“He was, I would say, philosophically a little bit different than me,” Trump added. “I think he was maybe less enthusiastic about going, but he was quite enthusiastic.”
Still, Trump “felt it was something we had to do.”
“I didn’t feel we had a choice,” he said. “If we didn’t do it, they would have done it to us,” he said. “I felt that based on the negotiations that were being had with Steve Witkoff and Jared Kushner and Marco [Rubio] and Pete [Hegseth] and everybody that was involved, I felt that they were looking to tap us along.”
Trump previously told RealClearPolitics that Vance “didn’t take persuading” to get on board with Operation Epic Fury.
Vance has assured Americans the president won’t let the war turn into a “multi-year conflict with no clear end in sight, and no clear objective.”
“What is different about President Trump, and it’s frankly different from Republicans and Democrats of the past, is that he’s not going to let his country go to war unless there’s a clearly defined objective,” Vance told Fox News.
“He’s defined that objective as Iran cannot have a nuclear weapon and has to commit long-term to never try to rebuild their nuclear capability.”
Trump said Monday that the war would end when he was confident Iran wouldn’t start developing nuclear weapons again the next day.
“Two levels of leadership are gone,” Trump said. “Most people have never even heard about the leaders that they’re talking about. So, it [the operation] has obviously been very, very effective.”
According to a national NBC News poll, 41% of the public approves of Trump’s “handling of the situation in Iran,” and 54% disapproves.