NY Times on JD Vance going to Pakistan...
Weeks after Vice President
JD Vance privately warned President Trump of the costs of a full-scale U.S. war with Iran, he is now leading the charge to negotiate an end to the biggest foreign policy crisis that the president has faced during his time in office.
Mr. Vance, along with Steve Witkoff, the president’s special envoy, and Jared Kushner, Mr. Trump’s son-in-law, are expected to travel to Pakistan on Friday to hold talks with the Iranians, as a cease-fire between the United States and Iran is under strain. It would be the highest-level meeting between U.S. and Iranian officials since 1979.
The stakes are enormous for Mr. Trump and for Mr. Vance, whose most high-profile assignments from Mr. Trump have involved domestic politics, most recently as the president’s
“fraud czar.”
Before the war began, the vice president was planning to be heavily focused on
traveling the country ahead of the midterm elections, counteracting widespread concerns over the cost of living and affordability by attacking Democrats as out of touch and politically extreme. The war has upended that messaging. An Iranian blockade around the Strait of Hormuz, a key oil route, has sent energy prices soaring.
“Knowing that this is a midterm election year,
that is the biggest leverage point that the Iranians have, and they know that,” said Marc Short, who served as chief of staff to Vice President Mike Pence, Mr. Vance’s predecessor from Mr. Trump’s first term. “That creates a challenge for the president’s negotiating team.”
He added: “There’s a best-case scenario that you have successful talks, and you have a great news cycle about it. But doesn’t Iran know that they can break the terms, as they have in the past?”
Mr. Vance, 41, has stayed largely at the
periphery of other high-stakes foreign policy missions, including the operation to seize Nicolás Maduro and depose him as Venezuela’s leader.
He was traveling in Azerbaijan in February, when Benjamin Netanyahu, the prime minister of Israel, delivered a presentation requesting U.S. involvement in a war with Iran.
