JD Vance is repeating Obama's Middle East mistakes.
Opposing war with Iran is understandable. Treating the Islamic Republic as a pillar of regional stability is not.
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U.S. Vice President JD Vance and former President Barack Obama could hardly appear more different politically. One emerged from the populist Right, the other from the “progressive” Left. One speaks the language of nationalism and restraint, the other of liberal internationalism and multilateralism.
Yet a provocative question is increasingly being asked in pro-Israel circles: Is JD Vance poised to become for the Trump era what Barack Obama became for his own — the American leader who fundamentally reorients Washington’s Middle East strategy, even at the expense of America and its traditional allies?
The comparison is imperfect, but it is no longer unreasonable.
From the earliest days of the recent U.S.-Israeli military campaign against Iran, it became increasingly apparent that Vance was deeply skeptical of military escalation. Trump told reporters that he and Vance were “philosophically, a little bit different” in their initial viewpoints on the Iran war.
There is nothing inherently wrong with that. In any democracy, disagreements over war and peace are both inevitable and healthy. Reasonable people can disagree over whether military action against Iran advances American interests.
But there is a profound difference between opposing a specific military operation and making the Islamic Republic of Iran — one of the worst regimes in modern history — a central stakeholder in the future architecture of the Middle East.
Washington has already made significant concessions to Tehran before resolving the core issues surrounding Iran’s nuclear program and regional aggression. Reports indicate that the United States has provided temporary sanctions relief, permitted continued Iranian oil exports during negotiations, and is considering granting Iran access to portions of its frozen assets.
At the same time, the most difficult questions — including the future of Iran’s enrichment program and long-term sanctions policy — have reportedly been deferred to later negotiations, allowing Tehran to retain much of its nuclear infrastructure in the interim.
Iran is not merely another state pursuing nuclear capabilities. It is the world’s leading state sponsor of terrorism, a revolutionary regime that has spent nearly half a century building a network of proxies stretching from Lebanon and Syria to Iraq, Yemen, and Gaza.
New reporting has shed light on just how deeply Iran has embedded itself inside Lebanon. According to Iran International, Lebanon’s parliamentary speaker allegedly receives more than $500,000 per month from Tehran to support Iranian interests and those of Hezbollah.
The issue has never been solely about centrifuges and uranium enrichment. It has always been about the nature of the regime itself.
The Islamic Republic has repeatedly demonstrated both the intent and the capability to destabilize the region, threaten global energy markets, disrupt international commerce, and ignite wider conflict at moments of its choosing. Any American strategy that treats Iran merely as a nuclear file rather than as a revolutionary actor risks fundamentally misunderstanding the challenge.
This concern is not new.
Barack Obama’s Middle East doctrine was built upon the belief that America’s traditional regional strategy had failed and that Washington needed to fundamentally rethink its relationships and assumptions.
The clearest expression of this vision came in Obama’s 2009 Cairo speech, which sought to reset relations with what he called the “Muslim world.” Critics viewed the speech as more than symbolic. They saw it as the beginning of a broader strategic shift: away from a regional order centered on America’s traditional allies and toward one increasingly reliant on Islamist movements, regional intermediaries, and long-standing adversaries.
Obama reportedly insisted that members of the Muslim Brotherhood attend the Cairo address despite the organization’s outlawed status in Egypt at the time, a decision that reportedly contributed to Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak declining to attend. More broadly, critics argued that the administration consistently underestimated the ideological ambitions of Islamist movements while overestimating the moderating effects of engagement.
At the same time, the Obama administration increasingly elevated Qatar into a central position within America’s Middle East strategy. Doha became indispensable to Washington’s regional diplomacy — serving as mediator with Hamas, host of negotiations with the Taliban, interlocutor with Iran, and a principal diplomatic bridge to a range of Islamist actors.
For many of America’s traditional regional allies, this represented a profound strategic shift. Qatar was not viewed simply as a neutral mediator. Rather, many in Jerusalem, Cairo, Riyadh, and Abu Dhabi saw Doha as the principal state sponsor and patron of Muslim Brotherhood movements across the region.
The Obama administration’s approach effectively transformed Qatar and other Islamist-aligned actors from regional disruptors into indispensable diplomatic stakeholders — and that same administration’s handling of Iran reinforced those concerns.
During the 2009 Green Movement protests, the Obama White House failed to adequately support Iranians risking their lives to challenge the regime. Those concerns deepened during negotiations over the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (colloquially known as the “Iranian nuclear deal”), which Obama viewed as a historic diplomatic achievement.
Israel and many Sunni Arab states viewed the agreement very differently.
From their perspective, the Iranian nuclear deal did not fundamentally alter the character of the Islamic Republic. Rather, it legitimized and empowered a revolutionary regime while only temporarily constraining its nuclear ambitions. The deal’s sunset clauses meant that many restrictions would eventually expire, while sanctions relief provided Tehran with significant new financial resources.
Rather than moderating Iranian behavior, critics argue, those resources helped strengthen Hezbollah in Lebanon, Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad in Gaza, Shiite militias in Iraq, the Assad regime in Syria, and the Houthis in Yemen.
More broadly, Obama’s administration increasingly viewed America’s traditional allies as obstacles to diplomacy while treating revisionist actors as indispensable partners.
This history matters because many Israelis and regional observers fear they are witnessing the early stages of a similar strategic realignment under JD Vance.
Israel’s ambassador to the United States, Yechiel Leiter, was highly critical of the diplomatic track pursued under current circumstances, warning in Hebrew as negotiations began that “we are in a train wreck.”
Those concerns intensified as the United States sought to end the recent conflict with Iran amid mounting fears over global energy markets and supply chains. Reports indicated that Tehran demanded any ceasefire arrangement extend not merely to the direct U.S.-Iran theater but also to Lebanon — terms that Israel has insisted are not binding upon it.
Even more troubling were reports that a new deconfliction mechanism for Lebanon, established as part of weekend negotiations between the United States and Iran in Switzerland, would exclude Israel altogether. According to Israel’s Channel 12, the arrangement would limit Israeli military action to responses against “imminent threats” rather than the broader category of “emerging threats” that has traditionally formed the basis of Israel’s preventive security doctrine.
If accurate, such an arrangement would represent a dramatic departure from longstanding Israeli security principles. It would effectively place decisions about Israel’s freedom of action in the hands of outside countries and international actors whose primary interest is regional stability, not Israel’s security.
For many Israelis, this raises an obvious question: Can countries that do not bear the consequences of Hezbollah rockets, Iranian proxies, or cross-border terrorism be trusted to determine when Israel may act in self-defense?
More striking still is the perception that Israel’s exclusion from portions of these diplomatic arrangements was not an oversight but a feature. As one observer noted regarding the U.S.-Iran memorandum negotiated in Pakistan, Israel’s exclusion was not a flaw. It was the point.
That is why comparisons between Vance and Obama are beginning to emerge.
Obama sought to reshape the Middle East by reducing America’s direct military footprint, empowering regional intermediaries, and seeking accommodations with adversaries where possible. Supporters viewed this as “realism,” but it was really retrenchment that empowered revisionist actors at the expense of America’s allies.
Whether Vance ultimately follows a similar path remains uncertain. Skepticism toward military intervention does not automatically translate into accommodation of hostile regimes.
Yet the central question remains: Is America’s objective merely to prevent an Iranian nuclear weapon? Or is it to constrain a revolutionary regime that has spent nearly five decades undermining regional stability, bullying America’s allies, and threatening the global economy?
How JD Vance answers that question may determine the future shape of the Middle East.
While Vance’s treatment of Iran as pillar of regional stability betrays a fundamental misunderstanding of the Iranian regime, Vance’s greater and unforgivable sin is his vilification of Israel, lies about Israel’s operations against Hezbollah and suggestion that American Jews have dual loyalty. Vance isn’t dangerous because he’s becoming Obama; Vance is dangerous because he’s becoming Tucker Carlson.
Just as Kamala was the border Czar; JD can become the Middle East Czar! 😆 Each of them is just as “incompetent” as the other!