It’s rather unusual for the VP to be given the lead role in a negotiation, but it’s quite possible that Rubio is happy to let him.

By The Associated Press

US Vice President JD Vance and Secretary of State Marco Rubio appear to be staking out differing approaches to carrying out President Donald Trump’s national security agenda as the possible 2028 presidential rivals jostle for position in a divided Republican Party.

With vastly different backgrounds and policy experience, they have moved along separate paths to stake out territory: Rubio, the son of Cuban immigrants with a long history in the Senate and major interest in Latin America, and Vance, a child of the Midwest and Marine Corps veteran who served in the Senate for only two years before being tapped as Trump’s 2024 running mate, with a message of opposing foreign wars.

While deferential to each other — and with the White House and State Department denying any suggestion of a rift — Vance and Rubio appear the most divergent on the Middle East.

In discussing Iran, Vance has several times been critical of Israel and its actions in Lebanon, saying Trump has been frustrated by Israeli actions against the Iranian-backed terror group Hezbollah that have angered Iran and made negotiations with Tehran more difficult.

Rubio, meanwhile, has remained supportive of Israel or held his tongue, particularly over the situation in Lebanon — an issue he has taken the lead on and resulted in a preliminary framework agreement last week.

Vance and Rubio’s respective policies on Iran and Lebanon appear to sometimes be at odds, given that the memorandum of understanding that the vice president inked with Iran accepted Tehran’s demand for a ceasefire in Lebanon, after the secretary of state established a separate channel of negotiations between Jerusalem and Beirut specifically designed to box Tehran out of influencing developments in Lebanon.

Vance takes lead on Iran negotiations and Rubio on Lebanon

“The talk about differences is not idle speculation,” said Dan Fried, a former assistant secretary of state and ambassador to Poland who is now with the Atlantic Council, a Washington think tank. “There is definitely something to it.”

The White House fired back at any suggestions of a rift.

“Why is the legacy media obsessed with driving a wedge between Vice President Vance and Secretary Rubio that does not exist? There is one camp — President Trump’s camp — and the entire administration is fully behind the president’s efforts to ensure Iran can never possess a nuclear weapon,” White House spokeswoman Anna Kelly said.

State Department spokesman Tommy Pigott added that “Rubio and the entire administration is 100% in lockstep behind President Trump.”

Similar denials were issued during former president Joe Biden’s administration when reports came out of vice president Kamala Harris’s disapproval of the level of White House support for Israel during the Gaza war. Harris would later confirm those reports after leaving office.

According to Trump administration officials familiar with the matter, Rubio was so skeptical of obtaining an acceptable deal with Iran that he declined to head the US delegation to the first ceasefire negotiations in April in Islamabad, Pakistan.

Vance, however, seeing an opportunity to burnish his foreign policy credentials, jumped on it, asking Trump twice to take the lead before Trump agreed, according to the officials, who spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss internal administration deliberations.

Vance did lead the US delegation to the inconclusive meeting in Pakistan, then again this month to talks in Switzerland, which followed the signing of an MOU between the US and Iran. The truce agreed to in that document is very fragile, tested by repeated exchanges of fire between the sides in recent days.

“It’s rather unusual for the VP to be given the lead role in a negotiation, but it’s quite possible that Rubio is happy to let him. It’s a pig in a poke. It’s a loser job,” said Ian Kelly, a retired career diplomat and ambassador during the first Trump administration.

He added that both men seem to “have equal ambitions to replace” Trump, but that the president’s semi-joking comments this month that he would blame Vance if the Iran talks do not succeed appeared to suggest that he was being “set up for failure.”

Vance and Rubio deny any division between them

Vance has talked up the chances of success for a broad agreement with Iran, albeit with caveats, while Rubio, although publicly supportive, has repeatedly taken a more agnostic line while denying any division.

“We’re all focused on the jobs in front of us. I think the president loves to stir the pot a little bit and loves the entertainment of it,” Vance said.

“I love Marco,” he said. “I think he’s a great secretary of state. He’s become a very, very dear friend. I think both of us are very much focused on accomplishing the American people’s business right now.”

Rubio also has rejected that there is any schism.

“When it comes to foreign policy and national security, we have no drama. We have no games,” Rubio told reporters last week during a trip to Bahrain, the last of a three-nation tour of the Arab Gulf countries that have been most directly affected by the Iran war.

“We have a group of people that work very well together and closely to execute on the president’s directives, which is why I think we’ve had good outcomes and good achievements, and we’re going to continue to have good outcomes and good achievements,” Rubio said. “Everyone has an important role to play, and everyone is playing that role and doing it in a collaborative process.”

That has not stopped Trump from fanning the flames of potential rivalry, repeatedly asking crowds of supporters who they would prefer to succeed him and suggesting at one point they might be an unbeatable ticket.

There is little doubt that the men do not share the same worldview, however.

“Rubio speaks within the rubric of the Ronald Reagan construct of the free world and its importance,” Fried said. “Vance is not interested in the free-world construct. He speaks in the language of not wanting to fight what he believes are abstractions.”

Fried said it is impossible to predict how that would translate into policy but warned that “we’re headed toward a bad place in Iran, which is giving up any support for Iranian civil society and not being terribly good at containing Iran.”

“Instead, we seem to be allowing ourselves to be backed into a ‘sphere of influence’ situation where Iran is weaker but ends up better off than before. I can’t imagine Rubio agreeing to that,” Fried said.

Aides to Rubio point out that he has said several times he would defer to the vice president should Vance choose to run for the 2028 Republican presidential nomination.

At the same time, Rubio has used his dual perch as Trump’s top diplomat and national security adviser to make over the National Security Council, installing several close allies in top White House positions in recent weeks.

Those include his former State Department counselor, Mike Needham, who is now deputy national security adviser.

Also, Jeremy Lewin, who oversaw the dismantlement of the US Agency for International Development for Rubio and took charge of foreign assistance last year, is soon to join the NSC as a deputy for the Western Hemisphere. The head of NSC communications, Dylan Johnson, also serves as assistant secretary of state for public affairs.

The post Vance, Rubio chart different paths as Iran tests 2028 contenders appeared first on World Israel News.

President Trump reportedly shifting his support from Vice President Vance to Secretary of State Rubio to lead the Republican Party in 2028.

By World Israel News Staff

President Donald Trump has privately raised doubts about whether Vice President JD Vance can carry the MAGA movement into the next presidential election, while increasingly comparing him with Secretary of State Marco Rubio, according to a New York Times report published on Saturday.

The report said Trump has repeatedly asked aides and allies whether Vance “has what it takes to go all the way,” usually answering that he is not certain.

The questioning does not amount to a break with Vance, whom Trump continues to empower on major policy and political fights, but it has turned the Vance-Rubio rivalry into one of the earliest tests of the Republican Party’s post-Trump future.

Vance is widely viewed as the default front-runner for the 2028 Republican nomination because he is vice president and remains popular with much of Trump’s base.

Rubio, however, has become one of Trump’s most visible Cabinet members, serving as secretary of state and holding a central role in national security policy.

Trump has privately asked people which man they prefer, at times framing the choice as “Who likes JD Vance?” and “Who likes Marco Rubio?” The president has stopped short of endorsing either man.

The New York Times reported that Trump has told allies Vance has never won a difficult race without his help, pointing to the Ohio Senate race in which Trump’s endorsement helped Vance secure the Republican nomination and win the seat.

Trump has also brought up the number of vacations Vance has taken, his initial opposition to the war with Iran and moments when the vice president did not appear presidential, including when Vance fumbled Ohio State’s national championship trophy at a White House event.

Trump has also joked at Vance’s expense in public and private. At a breakfast with Republican senators in November, Trump compared Vance unfavorably with officials who work under Chinese President Xi Jinping.

“Why don’t you behave like that?” Trump asked Vance, according to the Times. “JD doesn’t behave like that! JD butts into conversations! I want to have that for at least a couple of days. OK, JD?”

White House officials rejected the suggestion that Trump is turning against his vice president.

“Vice President Vance has done a remarkable job of helping implement the president’s America First agenda,” White House communications director Steven Cheung said in a statement to the Times.

“There has been no vice president in history who has been more empowered, and that is a reflection of the strong trust and relationship between the two.”

Cheung said “false media narratives from unknown and unnamed sources” did not reflect the relationship between Trump and Vance.

Donald Trump Jr. also defended Vance, saying through a spokesman that his father often praises the vice president’s combativeness.

“My father always brings up how JD is a savage and annihilates the fake news,” Trump Jr. said. “Interviews, rallies, podcasts — he shows up and performs and that’s what my father cares about.”

Publicly, Vance has shied away from policy disagreements with Trump.

Despite earlier reservations about the Iran war, Vance has defended the president’s decision and taken on critics of the administration, including conservatives uneasy about foreign intervention.

Tony Fabrizio, Trump’s longtime pollster, said Trump selected Vance in 2024 because he wanted a fighter for the MAGA agenda.

The president saw Vance as “a MAGA warrior who would go out every day and fight for the things the president wanted,” Fabrizio said. “He knew that, and that was exactly what he got.”

Still, the Iran war has complicated Vance’s standing with some anti-interventionist conservatives who had seen him as one of their most important allies.

Former Georgia Congresswoman Marjorie Taylor Greene, who had supported Vance for the vice-presidential slot but has since fallen out with Trump, said Vance would have difficulty rebuilding trust with Republicans opposed to the war.

“He is no longer in a place where he can hang on to his former reputation,” Greene told the Times. “There’s nothing that can protect him anymore.”

Rubio, meanwhile, has gained influence inside the administration. He spends frequent time with Trump on foreign policy matters, travels with him on Air Force One and has bonded with the president during weekends in Florida. His allies have also gained power in the national security apparatus, with longtime Rubio aide Mike Needham recently promoted to a senior White House national security role.

Recent polling has added to the sense that Rubio is becoming a serious rival to Vance.

An Emerson College poll cited by the New York Post found Vance leading Rubio by only one point among Republican voters, 36% to 35%, after Rubio surged sharply from earlier levels of support.

Trump has previously said Vance was “most likely” to be his political heir, citing his role as vice president, but he has also praised Rubio and floated the possibility of a Vance-Rubio ticket.

In an Oval Office interview this month, Trump was asked who was best positioned to inherit his movement.

“Whoever gets this is going to be very important,” Trump said. “And if you get the wrong person: disaster.”

Vance was in the room as Trump gave the answer.

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