When President Donald Trump first raised the prospect of war with Iran, some of the most serious reservations came from his second in command.
A former Marine who rose to political prominence as a critic of foreign wars, Vice President JD Vance counseled against the perils of launching another unpredictable conflict in the Middle East.
But as it became apparent that Trump still favored military action, Vance shifted his stance. He advocated for Trump to attack quickly and decisively, arguing it would be necessary to minimize American casualties and prevent Iran from striking first.
The vice president’s pivot, described by two people familiar with the events, reflected how Trump’s closest aides approached a war that few initially viewed as an imperative — but all of them ended up supporting.
As Trump weighed conflict, many of the loudest pro-war voices came from allies outside the White House rather than those in his inner circle, according to a half-dozen aides, advisers and others familiar with the matter. Those more vocal actors eventually drowned out quieter calls for caution.
In addition to Vance, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Gen. Dan Caine laid out the potential negative repercussions of striking Iran. Secretary of State Marco Rubio, already occupied with managing the aftermath of January’s raid on Venezuela, offered only tepid support at the outset. And chief of staff Susie Wiles had spent recent months more focused on political matters, plotting a midterm push focused on domestic priorities she worried had been overshadowed by Trump’s foreign policy forays.
People watch as smoke rises on the skyline after an explosion in Tehran, Iran, on February 28. – AP
Despite the misgivings, Vance and other top officials put up little resistance to war once they came to see it as inevitable, spending the run-up to the February 28 attack racing to execute Trump’s wishes rather than trying to change them.
“This is not a ‘team of rivals’ White House; the president is not having different policy minds tear out each other’s throats in open debate,” said Curt Mills, executive director of The American Conservative and among those deeply skeptical of foreign intervention. “If the president was unwilling or unable to say no, we were going to war.”
Those senior aides are now scrambling to build out a longer-term strategy for a fight with no clear endgame but plenty of risk to Trump’s presidency and — for some — their own future political aspirations.
Vance’s support for the war has alarmed the anti-interventionist wing of the GOP that he spent years cultivating, effectively gambling his 2028 fortunes on being able to pull off a fast win in the Middle East with few American deaths and no lasting consequences.
Vice President JD Vance talks on his phone as he walks to the West Wing of the White House on March 6. – Alex Brandon/AP
For Rubio, who is widely viewed as Vance’s chief rival for the 2028 nomination, a prolonged conflict threatens to jeopardize the goodwill he’s accumulated from overseeing a string of successful gambits abroad. He seemed to step in it just days into the war, prompting swift backlash when he suggested Israel led the US into striking Iran. He walked back those comments the next day, after Trump publicly disagreed.
“This is the precarious nature of this decision in particular,” said one former Trump administration official. “It could end up haunting the folks who have ambitions and want to see beyond this particular administration.”
The president’s team is juggling pressing challenges on several fronts, even as Trump has spent recent days touting the operation as a resounding military triumph.
At the State Department, Rubio is overseeing a belated effort to evacuate thousands of Americans stranded in the Middle East and under threat. Inside a Pentagon run by Pete Hegseth, there is anxiety about the extent of the nation’s weapons stockpiles and the war’s open-ended timeline.
Secretary of State Marco Rubio talks to reporters at the US Capitol on March 2. – Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images
And eight months out from midterm elections, Vance and Wiles are trying to contain the domestic fallout, seeking to reassure MAGA allies worried by Trump’s enthusiasm for war and to sell the broader public on its objectives while also finding new ways to limit the repercussions for the US economy — including the rapidly increasing cost of oil.
“There’s just no way that Donald Trump is going to allow this country to get into a multi-year conflict with no clear end in sight and no clear objective,” Vance insisted on Fox News last week, even as he conceded that “we could go for a little bit longer. We could go a lot longer.”
White House spokesperson Taylor Rogers said in a statement that Trump’s national security team was “working together daily to ensure the total and complete success of Operation Epic Fury.”
Still, a week into the fighting, there remains little clear sense of the war’s ultimate trajectory — and how exactly to ensure a clean exit.
Trump’s top aides are aligned on their desire to keep the war relatively brief, hoping it lasts weeks rather than months, the people familiar with the matter said. Since launching the initial strikes, they’ve stressed that their goals do not include regime change, wary of setting a standard for victory that’s not necessarily within the US’ control.
Though Trump has urged the Iranian people to take over their government once the current regime is decimated, there is little confidence in how that will play out and whether the new leadership will be friendlier for the US.
The USS Thomas Hudner fires a Tomahawk land attack missile toward Iran on March 1. – US Navy/Reuters
Vance, Rubio and other top officials have instead sought to establish a more manageable set of military objectives aimed at destroying Iran’s immediate weapons capabilities and effectively eliminating any progress toward developing a nuclear bomb.
Yet it’s uncertain precisely how long that will take as the military broadens its targets across the country. And it could go on further, given recognition that the US will likely play some role in managing the resulting leadership vacuum — Trump has mused that he would like a say in the next regime.
“For the next three weeks, roughly, they’re going to be striking a lot of material,” said one Trump administration official. “Then it’s going to be a couple months of, who’s establishing the control and how are they doing it? Who’s running the forces and how are they cooperating?”
Throughout the week, though, Trump’s top aides were confronting more immediate dilemmas far closer to home. Spooked by Iran’s sustained retaliation across the Middle East, oil shipments through the Strait of Hormuz — one of the world’s most critical waterways — had come to a standstill, driving up prices and prompting a sprint across the Treasury, Energy and Interior departments to develop new ways to temper the shock.
The surging oil prices have already filtered through to US gas prices, pushing the cost at the pump to its highest national average in more than two years — and wiping out progress on a key metric Trump had made a centerpiece of his midterm pitch on Americans’ affordability concerns.
Rogers, the White House spokeswoman, said Trump and his energy team “have had a strong game plan to keep oil prices stable” and that they were reviewing all credible options. By Friday, top Trump officials had rolled out some initial actions, including plans to start having the government insure tankers willing to venture across the Strait of Hormuz bordering Iran.
Yet despite the effort to ease the industry’s fears , oil prices continued to rise, signaling scant market confidence that Trump’s team had a handle on what might come next.
“They’re totally focused on it,” Richard Goldberg, a former senior Trump energy official, said of the push inside the administration. But with officials trying to navigate the unpredictable ripple effects of war, “you’re in somewhat uncharted territory.”
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