Explosive NY Times Report Reveals Vance Warned Iran War Would Be a ‘Disaster’ As Trump Dismissed Risks

(Photo by Jakub Porzycki/NurPhoto via AP)

Vice President JD Vance worried that launching a regime-change war against Iran could be a “disaster” and was the only administration official to forcefully express his skepticism in the weeks leading up to Operation Epic Fury, according to an explosive new report from The New York Times on Tuesday.

“[Vance] was for no strikes at all. But knowing that Mr. Trump was likely to intervene in some fashion, he tried to steer toward more limited action,” according to The Times. “Later, when it seemed certain that the president was set on a large-scale campaign, Mr. Vance argued that he should do so with overwhelming force, in the hope of achieving his objectives quickly.”

The 4,500-word deep dive from reporters Jonathan Swan and Maggie Haberman looked at the deliberations and meetings that led to President Donald Trump launching the war on Feb. 28, the same day joint U.S. and Israeli strikes killed Iranian Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei.

Vance warned Trump that a war against Iran could cause “regional chaos” and “untold numbers of casualties,” according to the report. The vice president also worried it would rip apart Trump’s political coalition and be viewed as a “betrayal” by many MAGA voters.

“Mr. Vance raised other concerns, too. As vice president, he was aware of the scope of America’s munitions problem,” Haberman and Swan wrote. “A war against a regime with enormous will for survival could leave the United States in a far worse position to fight conflicts for some years.”

The report comes as Trump has given Iran an 8:00 p.m. deadline on Tuesday to open the Strait of Hormuz or have its power plants and bridges destroyed.

Trump doubled down on that threat on Tuesday morning, posting, “A whole civilization will die tonight, never to be brought back again. I don’t want that to happen, but it probably will.”

The NYT report said Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu gave Trump a “hard sell” presentation on launching a strike against Iran on Feb. 11. Critics of the war, like Tucker Carlson, have argued the U.S. has “waged” the war on behalf of Israel since then — claims that Trump has shot down.

“If anything, I might’ve forced Israel’s hand,” Trump told ABC’s Rachel Scott last month.

Netanyahu’s pitch included four parts, with the first being the elimination of the ayatollah and the second being the “crippling [of] Iran’s capacity to project power and threaten its neighbors.” The third aspect was a popular uprising in Iran, and the fourth part was a “secular leader installed to govern the country.”

Vance was in Azerbaijan when Netanyahu made his war pitch in Washington, D.C., but “expressed strong skepticism” about striking Iran the following day during a meeting with top Trump officials.

Trump then turned to General Dan Caine and asked what he thought.

“Sir, this is, in my experience, standard operating procedure for the Israelis. They oversell, and their plans are not always well-developed. They know they need us, and that’s why they’re hard-selling,” Caine said, according to The Times.

Trump “quickly weighed the assessment” and decided regime change would be “their problem.”

The Times reported,  “It was unclear whether he was referring to the Israelis or the Iranian people. But the bottom line was that his decision on whether to go to war against Iran would not hinge on whether Parts 3 and 4 of Mr. Netanyahu’s presentation were achievable.”

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