Aamer Madhani
Washington: US President Donald Trump directed Vice President JD Vance to shift his focus away from the Iran war and instead devote himself to fighting what the president says is corruption and crime in Democrat-controlled cities and states.
Vance, who served as the lead negotiator for a short-lived truce in the eight-month war, has been blunt in blaming the war — and the economic reverberations it has caused — for Republicans’ sweeping losses in last week’s midterm elections in the US.
But Trump brusquely told the vice president in a social media post on Thursday to shift his energies away from the Iran war to what he argues is a more pressing — and perhaps more politically salient — issue after Republicans were trounced at the polls.
“We don’t need a deal with Iran,” Trump said in the post. “Those days have long since passed. We’ve got their money, Hundreds of Billions of Dollars, and we’ve got their Strait!”
Trump this week said that he believed the war “militarily is effectively over”, and appeared to double down on that message by pointedly directing Vance “to focus his complete and total attention” on his anti-fraud campaign.
Democrats have promised intense oversight of Trump’s business dealings and other targets when they take control of Congress in January after voters identified corruption as one of their top concerns. Trump’s post about Vance and the Iran war was, in part, responding to a flurry of reports about Democrats’ plans.
But it also came after The Wall Street Journal reported that Vance was weighing engaging in a new round of direct talks with a senior Iranian official.
The vice president’s office did not respond to a request for comment. The White House press office responded to a query by highlighting that Trump made clear in his post that he sees no need to negotiate with Iran.
Vance, who had long advocated for restraint in US military interventions overseas, was lukewarm in his defence of the conflict after Trump launched it and became the face of an unsuccessful attempt to end the fighting when he headed up negotiations over the summer.
Following the election losses, Vance wrote a lengthy post on X in which he didn’t mince words about the political impact of the conflict.
“If you’d like to argue it was worth it, that losing the Senate for the next 6 years was worth it, then do so,” Vance said. “Argue it was a worthwhile cost to pay. Agree or disagree, that’s at least honest.”
The vice president is considering whether to launch a 2028 run for the White House. Voter dissatisfaction with Trump’s handling of the war could weigh down those ambitions.
The president has yet to endorse a successor for the 2028 race. In a CBS 60 Minutes interview that aired on Sunday, the president said he “may or may not get involved” in offering an endorsement.
Trump this week said that he believed that mediation efforts led by Qatar were making progress and that it was unlikely he would need to make good on earlier threats to restart the full-scale bombardment of Iran after he was past the midterm elections.
The president said on Thursday that he stood ready to restart strikes if necessary. “If something doesn’t work out, I would not hesitate,” he said.
Oil shipments coming out of the Strait of Hormuz have recovered to near prewar levels after Iran effectively choked the critical waterway for months, stemming the flow of crude and energy resources from its Persian Gulf neighbours.
But international tankers now are relying on US Navy escorts to get the oil out of the strait. The US military has recently carried out limited strikes on Iran, including against its air defences.
And while crude and liquefied natural gas exports from the Gulf are climbing, there’s also been an uptick in attacks on ships trying to traverse the waterway.
Secretary of State Marco Rubio said this week he pressed his Group of Seven counterparts during talks in Paris to “step up” and help protect ships from Iranian attacks but acknowledged making no headway on the issue.
At the same time, a Saudi-led coalition is mired in fighting with Iranian-backed Houthi rebels in Yemen. That fighting has made it precarious to transport oil and other goods through the Bab el-Mandeb Strait, which connects the Red Sea to the Gulf of Aden and the Indian Ocean.
AP
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