Trump is 'sacrificing' Vance after midterm rout over Iran war and Israel, US expert says

US President Donald Trump has turned against Vice President JD Vance in the wake of the Republican defeat in the midterm elections, Dr. Kobi Barda, a US affairs expert at the Holon Institute of Technology's Multidisciplinary School, said in an interview with 103FM on Friday.

"One of the interesting things happening in the last 24 hours is the sacrificing of JD Vance," Barda said, pointing to two signs that the vice president has fallen out of favor: a post in which Trump said he had instructed Vance to stop dealing with Iran, and a leak to The Wall Street Journal in which Trump blamed him for halting the war.

On Thursday, Trump wrote on Truth Social that he had asked Vance to turn his attention to alleged corruption in Democratic-led states, and declared that the United States no longer needed a deal with Iran. Earlier this week, the Journal reported that Trump had privately questioned whether the June memorandum of understanding Vance helped negotiate with Iran was a costly mistake that gave Tehran time to regroup.

Barda traced the rift to a post Vance published the day after the November 3 midterms, in which he listed four reasons for the Republican collapse. "He supposedly did some soul-searching, blaming the campaign in Iran, encouraged by Israel, and at another point he says the relationship with Israel needs to be reconsidered," Barda said. A few minutes later, the president's son, Don Jr., reposted it and wrote "100%."

According to Barda, the dispute runs deeper than politics. "This is a family feud," he said, recalling that two significant figures were behind bringing Vance in as vice president: Susie Wiles, who was abruptly fired in what was claimed to be an effort to cut Vance out of decision-making, and Donald Jr., who pushed for his selection. Trump replaced Wiles as White House chief of staff with Stephen Miller on November 6.

Barda said the scale of the Republican defeat shook the White House and forced a rethink. "Trump's loss made him stop and think about where to go from here. It was a loss of biblical proportions," he said. "Just so you understand, the last time a Democratic senator was elected from Kansas was 94 years ago."

The shift on Iran was visible even among the war's most enthusiastic backers, Barda said, noting that the day after the election it was Senator Ted Cruz of Texas who declared, "Gentlemen, the Iran story is over." Barda described Cruz as "the person who was most in favor of the war in Iran" and a personal friend of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. In a podcast episode that day, Cruz said the war should have been "brief, decisive, and over," Al Jazeera reported.

Looking ahead, Barda said he expects Trump to tighten economic pressure on Tehran rather than continue the military campaign. He pointed to a Thursday interview in which conservative radio host Hugh Hewitt asked Trump whether he would see it as a failure if the ayatollahs' regime remained in place when his term ends, and Trump answered yes. "He is going with the model of an economic siege, and he is giving it two years' grace," Barda said. Trump told Hewitt it would "absolutely" be a defeat if Iran's leaders were still in power when he left office, while adding that he saw no need for military force for now because the US controlled the Strait of Hormuz.

Barda added that Trump's window to resume military action in Iran is closing. "After January 3, he will no longer be able to keep fighting beyond 60 days from the declaration of a military campaign," he said. "Those days already ran out in September. Until then, he still has a Republican majority."