Vice President JD Vance has quietly stepped into an unexpected role while President Donald Trump threatens to unleash more bombing.
Vance sent a letter to Mohsen Rezaei, a hard-line power broker in Tehran, in an attempt to get peace negotiations back on track, the Wall Street Journal reported Wednesday. Rezaei leads Iran's Supreme National Security Council and has commanded the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps longer than anyone else. One person familiar with the matter told The Journal that the letter went out at Trump's direction, and Trump knows about the outreach.
According to The Journal, Vance is feeling out whether the two countries share enough ground to convince Trump to hold off on a brief but punishing attack he has signaled could come within weeks.
The back channel cuts against Trump's own public messaging. Last week, he insisted the administration was not in talks with Tehran.
"We're not negotiating with them," Trump said, adding that "it'll happen soon."
On the campaign trail in recent days, he has told audiences he expects fighting to resume and that the conflict will end on his timeline.
Trump kept up the pressure Tuesday night.
"They've wanted to make a deal, but they like tapping it along," he told reporters, suggesting Iran might be waiting out the election before warning "that's not gonna help them."
The exchanges so far have centered on how talks might be structured rather than the terms of any deal, a source told The Journal. Rezaei himself said last week Iran would not come to the table until certain core demands were satisfied. Earlier this month, he warned Tehran could hit the United Arab Emirates along with internet cables and data centers across the region.
Vance has publicly supported the war while privately voicing doubts about dragging it out, according to The Journal. He pushed for more diplomacy before Trump launched "Operation Epic Fury" in February and later served as lead negotiator, traveling abroad twice for talks. A memorandum of understanding reached in June fell apart within two weeks over disputes about reopening shipping through the Strait of Hormuz.
The timing also carries political weight. Republicans are bracing for losses in next week's midterms, with voters pointing to the war and rising fuel costs as reasons for their frustration. Vance is considered the early frontrunner for the GOP's 2028 presidential nomination, The Journal noted.
A Vance spokesman declined to discuss the talks, and the White House referred questions to the vice president's office. Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi wrote on social media that "Iran continues to give diplomacy a chance to succeed."