Former Vice President Mike Pence isn’t known for throwing rhetorical bombs, but Monday morning on Fox News, he delivered a message to his old running mate that left little room for interpretation. The time for diplomatic dance is over, Pence argued. It’s time to unleash the full might of the American military on Iran’s remaining nuclear facilities and finish what started months ago.
“One does not make peace with one’s enemy,” Pence told Bill Hemmer. “One makes peace with one’s defeated enemy.”
Those aren’t the words of a man hedging his bets. Pence, who has walked a careful line since leaving office, praised President Trump’s initial strikes against Iran as “historic” and “brilliant.” He reminded viewers that American forces took down 13,000 military sites in that first month of operations, a campaign that broke 47 years of American restraint toward Tehran. But where Trump has since pivoted toward diplomacy, opening the door for negotiations and holding back from further strikes, Pence sees weakness being exploited.
The Iranians, he noted, are now openly denying that talks are even happening while continuing to project force across the region. The Strait of Hormuz remains a pressure point. Their nuclear program, while damaged, still breathes. And every day that passes without decisive action, Pence suggests, is a day Iran believes America has lost its nerve.
Is he wrong? The administration’s own messaging has been a study in contradictions. Trump confirms talks are back on. Iranian officials deny them. The president warns this is Tehran’s “last chance” while simultaneously pulling back military assets. It’s the art of the deal meets the fog of war, and for observers like Pence, the signal to noise ratio is becoming untenable.
What makes Pence’s intervention notable isn’t just the substance but the source. This isn’t a neocon hawk from the Bush era or a freshman congressman trying to build a brand. This is Trump’s own vice president, a man who stood beside him through impeachment, through January 6, through the transition that wasn’t. When Pence says “the president I served with is a man of action,” he’s speaking from intimate knowledge. And when he adds that it’s time to “turn loose” the U.S. military, he’s issuing a challenge wrapped in a compliment.
The theological undertones shouldn’t be missed either. Pence has always grounded his politics in faith, and his framing here carries echoes of Just War theory, the conviction that force, while terrible, can be necessary to prevent greater evil. A nuclear-armed Iran isn’t merely a geopolitical problem in this view. It’s a threat to innocent life, to regional stability, to the very order that allows nations to coexist without slaughtering each other.
But there’s a harder question lurking beneath Pence’s righteous urgency. What does “finish the job” actually look like? Pence insists we can let our armed forces and Israel “finish the job,” but he’s light on what the finished product resembles, whether that means regime change, decades of occupation, or another trillion-dollar nation-building experiment that leaves everyone exhausted and nothing resolved.
Trump, for all his bluster, seems to understand something his former partner won’t say out loud. Americans are tired of forever wars. The initial strikes against Iran enjoyed broad support because they were discrete, punitive, and didn’t come with promises of transforming Persian civilization. Pence is now asking for something more open-ended, more ambitious, more reminiscent of the very foreign policy Trump ran against in 2016 and again in 2024.
Will the president listen? History suggests Trump keeps his own counsel. He’s weathered criticism from former allies before, and he’s unlikely to be swayed by Pence’s Fox News appearance if his own instincts point toward a negotiated settlement. But the pressure is mounting from multiple directions. Israel wants clarity. The Gulf states want stability. And now Trump’s own vice president is publicly questioning whether the current path leads anywhere worth going.
The coming days will tell us which vision prevails. Diplomacy or destruction. Deal-making or decisive force. The president has spent his career insisting he can walk between raindrops, that he can achieve what others consider impossible through sheer force of will and negotiating prowess. But Iran isn’t a casino developer or a reality show contestant. It’s a theocratic regime that has outlasted twelve American presidents and buried its own dead in the hundreds of thousands rather than surrender.
Pence is right about one thing. The Iranians should be wary. But perhaps the rest of us should be wary too, of promises that sound simple and solutions that aren’t. “Unleash the armed forces” makes for compelling television. What comes after is rarely so clean.
— via Breitbart
Providence watches over the bold.
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