LUKE FELTHAM

JD Vance has had a bruising — some might argue embarrassing — couple of weeks.

He was the face of the stillborn 16-hour peace talks in Islamabad with Iran that yielded nothing. They followed a trip to Budapest where he delivered a rousing endorsement of Viktor Orbán. Hungary’s populist was trounced, surrendering his rule after 16 years.

Now Vance is feuding with the Pope, chastising the pontiff for his recent thinly veiled critique of the Iran War. “How do you say that God is never on the side of those who wield the sword?” The question followed a similar tirade from his principal, President Donald Trump, and the sharing of a since-deleted image of Trump as Jesus Christ.

But it’s not the absurdity that will trouble Vance’s image. It’s the failure. Vance is now inexorably tethered to the biggest disaster in American memory. The US-Israel war with Iran has failed to achieve any of its objectives — at least the targets we can extrapolate from the consistently opaque rhetoric surrounding the conflict. Instead, it has caused, to quote the head of the International Energy Agency, the “greatest global energy security challenge in history”.

The disapproval of blue, leftist America never mattered much to Vance or Trump. It’s also debatable how much the hypocrisy of going to war in spite of campaign promises not to would ultimately trouble their reputations. But failure, particularly the kind that squeezes pockets, is unlikely to be tolerated. Multiple polls are bad reading for the administration. For instance, one from Reuters/Ipsos had Trump’s second term at a 62% disapproval rate one month into the war.

Why should we care about Vance’s troubles? A few months ago, with the Democratic Party stumbling to find a coherent counterplan to the rise of Trumpism, his ascension to the presidency was being spoken of as a fait accompli. As the natural Republican successor, Vance is being groomed to hold that most bombastic American title: the leader of the free world. In other words, the rest of us have no choice but to care.

Vance is an interesting character. As a young politician he was famously critical of his current boss, describing himself as a “never‑Trump” person, and in private messages wondered out loud if he was “America’s Hitler” and a “cynical a‑hole”.

While undoubtedly wedded to conservative values, he was relatively level-headed in his rhetoric, even on froth-at-the-mouth issues like immigration. But Trump’s call in 2024 was seemingly a Faustian bargain too good to reject. The union worked for both parties, putting Vance on a fast track to the Oval Office.

The White House ambush of Volodymyr Zelensky was a microcosm of the dynamic: Vance’s pointed, attack dog probing was a highly useful complement to Trump’s feral energy. For as globally disruptive as their first year together was, there was no question that the White House was in full control of the direction in which the planet was spinning.

That changed with the launch of Operation Epic Fury on the last day of February. As these words go to print, Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps has, despite recent murmurs of positive peace talks, once again closed the Strait of Hormuz. Iran retains its leverage, and the situation looks as intractable as ever.

That Vance now has his name plastered onto the fiasco is ironic. Thanks to outstanding journalism by Jonathan Swan and Maggie Haberman in the New York Times, we have a good sense of the decision-making that went into the decision to launch. According to their reporting, Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu pitched the plan to Trump and his team on February 11. His promise was that the Iranian regime was teetering and just needed a nudge to collapse.

CIA intelligence later called the scenario “farcical”, but the idea had evidently taken hold in Trump’s mind. Secretary of war Pete Hegseth greeted it with a zeal befitting his title. Secretary of state Marco Rubio was ambivalent. But Vance was strongly sceptical. The plan had holes, and the repercussions would be disastrous. (There might have even been a hint of moral contrition in his protests). Yet the group ultimately agreed to follow Trump’s instincts, which they insist had never let them down.

In retrospect, the knowledge that Vance had serious objective doubts explains his asinine assertion a few weeks ago that this war would be different because the past ones had “dumb presidents”. Even an intelligent person struggles to put logic to that which they feel is illogical.

As vice-president Vance will always fully support his senior in public whether he agrees or not. But that will not spare him from history’s recriminations.

• Feltham is Business Day editor-in-chief.