Over a candlelit dinner with Emmanuel Macron at the Palace of Versailles on 17 June, Donald Trump signed an agreement intended to end the war with Iran – a location whose last peace treaty, the 1919 Treaty of Versailles, set the stage for World War II. The formal ceremony had been expected in Switzerland with Vice-President JD Vance representing the US, but Trump could not wait – or could not abide ceding the limelight. The White House released footage of Trump appending his signature with a black marker, Secretary of State Marco Rubio hovering behind him, captioned: “Peace through Strength.”
The reality is likely to be neither. The Islamabad Memorandum of Understanding commits both sides to “refrain from interfering in each other’s internal affairs” – a far cry from Trump’s earlier boasts of “UNCONDITIONAL SURRENDER” and promises to Iranians that the “hour of your freedom is at hand.” Now Trump calls the Iranian leadership “very rational” and “nice to deal with,” even as the surviving regime has grown more hardline and emboldened.
“Trump signed the Iran peace deal at Versailles; Vance defends it as White House blames him for unpopular agreement.”
Vance has become the public face of the unpopular deal. At a White House press briefing on Thursday, he brushed aside a question about whether Trump had positioned him as the fall guy, insisting the president was joking when he said he might blame Vance if the deal collapses. But the vice-president has spent the week defending the memorandum, often contradicted or overshadowed by Trump. Late Thursday, the White House announced Vance would not travel to Switzerland for the signing ceremony, at least for now.
Vance delivered a forceful defence of the agreement and a blunt rebuke of Israel’s response, going further than Trump. “Donald J Trump is the only head of state in the entire world who is sympathetic to the nation of Israel at this moment in time,” he told reporters. “If I was in the cabinet of the Israeli government, I might not be attacking the only powerful ally that I have anywhere left in the entire world.” Columnist Shadi Hamid called it “probably the toughest public criticism offered by a US administration towards Israel in my lifetime.”
The timing is awkward for Vance, who just published a memoir intensifying speculation about a 2028 presidential run. Dr Andreas Krieg, a Gulf security expert at King’s College London, said: “His credibility is now tied to the success of the emerging deal. His face is on it, and he has to own it. If the agreement collapses, he will be blamed.”
Meanwhile, potential rivals like Marco Rubio have manoeuvred out of the spotlight. Some Republicans see the assignment as a trap. “It’s not in the president’s nature to cede the limelight and he’s done that here,” said strategist Matt Mackowiak. “That does feel like a deliberate choice.” A longtime Republican operative put it more bluntly: “It’s classic Trump to throw JD under the bus.”
Yet the deal faces criticism from both isolationist Maga supporters and Iran hawks. Israeli ministers have advocated ignoring the requirement for a ceasefire with Hezbollah, and heavy fighting continued overnight. One Republican senator called the agreement “the worst foreign policy blunder in…” as growing numbers of Republicans condemn a deal that appears to offer Iran more than Barack Obama’s 2015 nuclear accord, which Trump once discarded.