TEHRAN WAS BUYING TIME AND JD VANCE SOLD IT TO THEM
I believe Iran’s leaders use negotiations to buy time. Time to rebuild. Time to develop new weapons. Time to resupply. Time to plan and prepare for their next attack.
For that strategy to work, Tehran needs the other side to believe it genuinely wants an end to hostilities. But there’s another way it can work. If the people across the table are under enough financial and political pressure to end the war, they may be willing to accept a deal they have reason to doubt. They can tell their supporters they ended the fighting while giving Iran the breathing room it came to the table to get.
The danger grows when American negotiators give too little weight to what that breathing room could mean for Israel and the Jewish people. A deal may be politically popular in Washington. But if Iran uses the pause to rebuild and rearm, who will bear the cost when the fighting starts again?
Enter JD Vance and the far right.
Tehran didn't fool Netanyahu for a moment. Netanyahu didn't believe the war was finished in June 2025. Netanyahu wanted to finish the job! Trump unilaterally declared victory.
While Trump was claiming victory, Netanyahu shifted from all-out war to a series of targeted strikes on Iran’s military leadership. While Trump bragged about destroying Iran’s military equipment, Israel focused on the head of the octopus. One by one, top commanders of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) were killed. As Israel weakened Iran’s command structure, Tehran and Washington returned to negotiations.
And so began a series of "on-again off-again" negotiations. Trump kept pressing for a deal. This went on until February 2026 when the Israel/US —Iran war entered another Kinetic phase that lasted until another Ceasefire was declared in April 2026.
JD Vance went back to the negotiating table again. Again giving Tehran what it wanted—TIME!
For literally decades, Israel has been battling an octopus. Tehran is the head, and its armed proxies are the tentacles. After the April ceasefire, Trump focused on keeping oil flowing through the Strait of Hormuz, while Israel continued fighting Hezbollah in Lebanon and the Houthis in Yemen.
On April 9, Iranian President Masoud Pezeshkian accused Israel of violating the ceasefire by striking Lebanon. After the ceasefire, JD Vance led the U.S. delegation to talks with Iran in Islamabad. On July 15, speaking on Joe Rogan’s podcast, Vance accused some people within the Israeli government of “manipulating and trying to change American public opinion to keep the war going on indefinitely.”
The irony is that Netanyahu had publicly laid out an endpoint. In June 2025, he said the fighting would stop once Israel achieved its objectives against Iran’s nuclear and ballistic missile programs. By November 2026, Axios reported that he wanted to resume combat and urged Trump to finish the job militarily because he did not trust Tehran to honor a deal. That’s the difference at the heart of this story. Netanyahu wanted to settle the threat militarily. Vance pushed for a negotiated deal. And in my view, the longer those talks dragged on, the more time Tehran had to regroup and rebuild.
In 2006, Middle East historian Bernard Lewis warned of “the apocalyptic worldview of Iran’s present rulers.” He was writing about nuclear deterrence, but his warning raises a question for negotiators too. If Tehran’s leaders see their conflict with Israel as part of a final struggle, why assume they see a deal as the end of that conflict? They may see it as time to prepare for the next round.
On November 4, the morning after the midterms, JD Vance wrote, “The reason we lost is the war.” Among the changes he said voters wanted was a call to “change our relationship to Israel.” To me, that was the unofficial opening of his 2028 presidential campaign. The day after Republicans lost Congress, Vance was already telling voters where he would part ways with Trump and put "America First."
That quiet start will grow louder each week. JD Vance doesn't even need to say it because Tucker Carlson and his followers AND Trump/Netanyahu hating Democrats will say it for him. All that makes Tehran the winner.
Iran International reported, citing classified government documents and other evidence it reviewed, that Iranian security forces killed more than 36,500 people during the January 8–9, 2026, crackdown on nationwide protests. If Trump had cut off the head of the Octopus and buried the Revolutionary Guard under the rubble of Pickaxe Mountain, in my opinion many of those slaughtered Iranians might be alive today and the Iranian people could have had the opportunity they have been promised by Trump to take back their country.
At the end of the day, Trump and Netanyahu are in the same boat. Both Netanyahu and Trump have little to lose and a lot to gain for finishing the war the right way, the way it should have been done in June 2025!
It is still not too late!
If Israel and the Trump Administration topple the IRGC and free the Persian people from their evil government leaders, Iran’s proxies, Hamas, Hezbollah and the Houthis will lose the support they depend on. That will give Lebanon and Yemen the chance to take back their countries as well.
If this were to happen, and it can, that will be Netanyahu and Trump's greatest legacy, which is what both men want. That would change the Middle East and the world for the better.