Axios reported Vance in “almost daily” contact with Qatar and Pakistan mediators
The United States has maintained a blockade on Iranian ports and has mostly reopened the Strait of Hormuz to marine traffic, including crude oil shipments, The Guardian reported Thursday. The US has not carried out massive strikes against Iran for several months, and Iran has not launched barrages of ballistic missiles against US bases and allies in the region.
Vance had reportedly been talking to intermediaries in Iran and Qatar about restarting negotiations to end the war. Axios reported last week that Vance was speaking “almost daily” with Sheikh Mohammed, Qatar’s prime minister; Pakistan’s army head, Asim Munir; and other mediators. Several weeks ago, Vance sent a letter to Mohsen Rezaei, the secretary of the Supreme National Security Council, to resume direct negotiations.
The war began in February, when the United States and Israel launched joint strikes on Iran. Iran responded by closing access to the Strait of Hormuz, which led to a steep increase for the cost of fuel around the globe.
Since then the conflict has settled into a stalemate. On Thursday, Trump appeared to shut down the negotiations, redirecting Vance to focus on domestic issues and downplaying the need for a final deal. In a post to his social media site, Trump said he was redirecting the vice president to focus his “complete and total attention on the Massive Corruption and Crime taking place in Democrat run Cities and States throughout the U.S.”
“We don’t need a deal with Iran,” Trump wrote. “Those days have long since passed. We’ve got their money, Hundreds of Billions of Dollars, and we’ve got their Strait!”
Trump had already been signaling the shift. Last week he downplayed the possibility of new strikes on Iran and said that the war was “effectively over.” During a White House press conference, which took place shortly after he met with Qatar’s prime minister, Sheikh Mohammed bin Abdulrahman Al Thani, Trump said that Israel and Gulf allies in the region were well protected from Iran, and that an escalation was not needed.
“At this point, taking the military action doesn’t seem to be a very necessary thing – but we’re locked and loaded, ready to go for any reason,” he told reporters during a briefing at the White House.
Trump said he had been lobbied by the leaders of Gulf states not to resume the war.
The decision effectively sidelines Vance from the main foreign policy challenge of his vice-presidency. He had publicly distanced himself from the war, and in April he led a US delegation to Islamabad to negotiate an end to it. Trump’s son-in-law Jared Kushner and envoy Steve Witkoff have also been involved in negotiations.
Vance last week blamed the conflict for the historic rout dealt to Republicans in the midterm elections. “The reason we lost is the war,” Vance said after the midterms in a lengthy post on X. “The president himself said so last night.”
Trump has since defended launching the war on Iran, acknowledging that it drove up fuel prices while repeating his frequent assertion that it was needed to prevent Iran from obtaining a nuclear weapon.