Does JD Vance think Trump was wrong to attack Iran?

Every presidential primary season is defined by a few questions that candidates spar over for the length of the contest. In the 2008 Republican primary, it was over the bipartisan immigration bill the conservative wing labeled “amnesty,” a debate John McCain, a co-author of the bill, survived to win the nomination. For Democrats in 2016, it was over single-payer healthcare: Bernie Sanders’s promise of “Medicare for all,” which Hillary Clinton insisted would “never, ever come to pass.” Clinton won the nomination, but Sanders won the argument.The nascent 2028 Republican primary already has its marquee question, one every candidate will face again and again and whose answers will be dissected ad nauseam: Was President Donald Trump right to launch the war against Iran in February 2026? The two leading contenders to succeed Trump as the party’s standard-bearer, Vice President JD Vance and Secretary of State Marco Rubio, are already offering starkly different answers, in both substance and tone.Immediately following the party’s punishing midterm losses, Vance issued a blunt postmortem on X that pinned the defeat squarely on the war. “The real reason we lost is obvious to almost everyone,” he wrote. “The reason we lost is the war.” Citing an unnamed pollster, Vance laid out four tasks he said would bring voters back to the GOP: end the war in Iran, focus on the cost of living and inflation, put America first, and “change our relationship with Israel.” One of the things the data analysts on our side obsessed over was "composition"—whether the electorate looked close enough to 2024 for Republicans to win. And despite polls that showed a Democrat blowout, the data kept on telling us the same story: in some states turnout was…— JD Vance (@JDVance) November 4, 2026 Vance continued: “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. Argue it was a worthwhile cost to pay. Agree or disagree, that’s at least honest.” The pollster turned out to be Mark Mitchell, formerly of Rasmussen, who has since become a strident critic of Trump.Within days, both Trump and Rubio took up Vance’s challenge.Trump, asked about the post at the White House, called it “largely true” but stood by the war: “You can’t let Iran have a nuclear weapon.”Rubio went further. Speaking at Mar-a-Lago, he cast the war as an act of presidential courage: “It would have been very easy to do what multiple presidents before him have done, which is to ignore the Iran thing, leave it for the next guy,” Rubio said. “He did it for you. Not for him, not for anybody else.” Americans, he added, along with their children and “children not yet born,” owe Trump a deep sense of gratitude.Then on Sunday night’s episode of 60 Minutes, Trump elaborated.Asked by Ross Douthat about Vance’s theory that the war cost Republicans the midterm elections, the president said he didn’t disagree with it. His one complaint was what Vance left out: whether Vance, as part of the decision-making process, would make the same call again.Trump answered for himself: “My answer is an emphatic yes because you can’t let Iran have a nuclear weapon.” He conceded the war may not have been a good decision in the short term but predicted history would judge it favorably. SECRETARY RUBIO: I think the president took on something that other presidents have failed to do. Sometimes, when you do the right thing, you don't know whether it's popular or not, but it's still the right thing to do. Presidents are elected to take on the hard things, sometimes… pic.twitter.com/Ps5pAGhnFi— Department of State (@StateDept) November 8, 2026 Also on Sunday, the State Department’s X account shared a video of Rubio once again lauding the president for the decision, saying, “Sometimes, when you do the right thing, you don’t know whether it’s popular or not, but it’s still the right thing to do. Presidents are elected to take on the hard things, sometimes difficult things, but necessary things.”Read plainly, Vance’s post is a verdict: The midterm elections were not a “worthwhile cost to pay” for keeping a nuclear weapon out of Iran’s hands. But he can expect the defining question of the 2028 primary to be put to him directly in the coming days: Was Trump ultimately right to attack Iran?Trump’s answer is clear, and Rubio’s quick move to back the president will force Vance to give a clear answer of his own.TRUMP’S COLLAPSE SETS VANCE FREELast week, I argued that Vance’s path to the nomination, and ultimately the presidency, is complicated most of all by his need to stay in the good graces of both Trump and a New Right base that hates the war with a passion. The race’s opening days have already shown just how difficult that balancing act will be.