Vice President JD Vance has spent the past two weeks personally leading quiet, indirect negotiations with Iran aimed at a new ceasefire and a revival of stalled nuclear talks, Axios reported on Friday, November 7. The revelation comes as President Donald Trump weighs whether to resume major strikes against Iran, keep up economic pressure, or pursue a deal — a decision he says is coming soon.
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| File photo: Vice President JD Vance in his official portrait, March 2026. Vance has spent the past two weeks leading indirect talks with Iran, according to Axios. (Official White House photo) |
The backchannel effort puts the vice president, not the State Department, at the center of the administration's most sensitive foreign policy question. It also marks a striking turn for Vance, who publicly blamed the eight-month-old war for his party's losses in Tuesday's midterm elections — and who has now taken charge of the effort to end it.
A Letter, Daily Calls, and Two Mediators
According to Axios, citing two sources with knowledge of the matter, Vance has held almost daily discussions with Qatari Prime Minister Sheikh Mohammed bin Abdulrahman Al-Thani and Pakistan's Army Chief Asim Munir, along with other mediators who have been relaying messages between Washington and Tehran.
The push began about two weeks ago, when Vance sent a formal letter to Mohsen Rezaei, secretary of Iran's Supreme National Security Council, proposing a return to direct talks. Iranian officials told Axios the letter had created positive momentum.
White House special envoy Steve Witkoff and presidential adviser Jared Kushner are also engaged in the diplomatic track, according to the reporting. The two sides have discussed holding a working-level technical meeting between American and Iranian officials in the coming days, although no such meeting has yet taken place. The vice president's office declined to comment on the talks.
Diplomacy continued on Friday morning, when Trump spoke with Qatari Emir Sheikh Tamim bin Hamad Al-Thani about Doha's mediation efforts.
Asked by reporters on Friday about his message to Iran, Trump said simply: "We're talking to them." According to Axios, Trump remains willing to let diplomacy proceed to test whether a deal can be forged — even as US forces stand ready to strike on short notice if he orders them.
Three Camps, Three Options
Trump met with his national security team on Wednesday and again on Thursday, according to multiple reports, and told reporters afterward that a decision was coming "soon" — asking aloud whether the United States should "go further" with strikes to ensure Iran's nuclear program is finished for good.
"I would rather not destroy the rest of the country if possible, but maybe I will have to," Trump said, according to the reporting.
Axios reported that Trump is weighing three courses of action, each backed by a different group of advisers: a negotiated settlement, urged by Vance and Witkoff; a return to major combat, favored by Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu; and the current course — a naval blockade and economic pressure, with neither war nor a deal — advised by CIA Director John Ratcliffe and Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent, according to the reporting.
NBC News reported separately that advisers briefed Trump on a narrow window — roughly eight weeks, before a new Congress takes office in January — for restarting major combat operations. The briefing is not an order to strike, and no new directive has been issued, according to the reports.
Tehran's Seven Conditions and a Qatari Draft
Iran, for its part, has sent a formal nuclear proposal to Washington through Qatari mediators. But Tehran has also set out seven conditions before talks can advance further, according to the reporting. Rezaei restated those conditions on Thursday during a visit to Moscow, where he met Russian President Vladimir Putin and delivered a message from Khamenei.
Qatari mediators have circulated a draft confidence-building sequence, according to Axios: on day one, the United States would lift its naval blockade and release some frozen Iranian funds while Iran invites inspectors from the International Atomic Energy Agency to its bombed nuclear sites; on day two, the Strait of Hormuz would reopen and nuclear talks on Iran's enriched-uranium stockpile would follow.
Whether the draft can bridge the gap is far from certain. Participants involved in the mediation have described progress as extremely sluggish, even as they say headway is being made.
A War That Has Already Shaped American Politics
Trump launched the war jointly with Israel in February, predicting a brief conflict that could bring down the Iranian government, which he called the "bully of the Middle East." The attacks dealt severe blows to Iran's military and its underground weapons storage facilities, but the conflict settled into a stalemate after an April ceasefire failed to produce a peace deal.
Since then, Iran has recovered some of its buried arsenal and threatened ships passing through the Strait of Hormuz. Eighteen Americans have died in the conflict so far, according to reports. This week, tankers caught fire in the strait after reported mine strikes, and Brent crude swung sharply — falling more than 8 percent on Wednesday before rising again to about $98 a barrel.
At home, the war has become a political liability for the administration. Democrats won majorities in both chambers of Congress in Tuesday's midterm elections, and the war — along with rising gasoline prices — was a central issue in the campaign.
Vance himself has been unusually open about the political cost, saying on Wednesday that the war was the main reason voters rejected Republicans and calling an earlier recommendation to end the war "sound advice." Trump told reporters he thought Vance's remarks were good. "I know how he feels about it," he said — while defending the war itself: "We stopped them from having a nuclear weapon."
Vance's Long Record as the Diplomat in the Room
Vance's new role is not entirely new. He was the most doubtful voice in Trump's inner circle before the war broke out in late February, and he headed the US negotiating team at an April summit on Iran in Islamabad, helped secure a bilateral memorandum of understanding last June, and later led direct talks in Switzerland that won a Tehran pledge to welcome back United Nations nuclear inspectors. That agreement collapsed shortly afterward, when units of Iran's Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps resumed attacks on commercial shipping — a reminder of how quickly progress can unravel. It also matters politically: Vance is widely seen as a leading contender for the Republican presidential nomination in 2028, and his handling of the Iran file is likely to define his standing within the party for years.
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| File photo: President Donald Trump signs an executive order in the Oval Office on April 30, 2026. Trump says a decision on Iran is coming soon. (Official White House photo) |
What This Means
Washington looks genuinely divided, with the president himself still undecided — the best and the worst news for anyone hoping for a settlement.
The best news is that diplomacy is not a sideshow: the vice president is running it personally, the president has said he is willing to let it play out, and a concrete draft with defined steps on both sides exists — with Iran responding with a formal proposal of its own.
The worst news is that the clock is working against the negotiators. The military option is not theoretical: forces are ready, advisers have briefed the president on a window of roughly eight weeks, and the hardline camp inside the administration is arguing that a deal would waste the leverage the blockade and the bombing campaign have created. Meanwhile, incidents in the Strait of Hormuz — mines, fires, seized vessels — can escalate on their own, regardless of what anyone in Washington or Tehran decides. And Democrats take control of Congress on January 3, having pledged to rein in the war — giving the administration an incentive to settle the question before then, but also giving the president a reason to act while he still has a free hand.
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| File photo: Oil tankers pass through the Strait of Hormuz, the narrow waterway at the center of the US-Iran standoff. |
What Happens Next
The most immediate is Trump's promised decision on whether to resume major strikes. He has said it is coming "soon," and his national security team has already met twice this week on the question.
Watch, too, for whether the working-level technical meeting between American and Iranian officials actually takes place — a sign that both sides are serious about testing the Qatari draft.
Secretary of State Marco Rubio travels to Paris this weekend for a G7 foreign ministers' meeting, where Iran is expected to feature, and Russia, Ukraine, and the United States are due to hold talks in Abu Dhabi on November 10 and 11.
For now, the war that was supposed to be brief enters its ninth month with its outcome still undecided — and with the man charged with ending it now the second most powerful person in the American government.
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