Trump's Iran strikes put potential heirs Vance and Rubio in spotlight

WASHINGTON — President Donald Trump’s decision to strike Iranian nuclear facilities put a spotlight on two former senators who could vie to succeed him as the leader of the Republican Party and his “Make America Great Again” movement: Vice President JD Vance and Secretary of State Marco Rubio.

As the commander in chief addressed the nation Saturday night from the East Room of the White House, Vance stood behind his right shoulder and Rubio was over his left. Vance, who briefly served as an Ohio senator, was mostly stern-faced, while Rubio, the former senior senator from Florida who is also the acting national security adviser, nodded along as Trump explained his decision.

The framing had a distinct present-and-future feel, with the 79-year-old Trump staring down a departure from active politics at the end of this term — though he has said his team is “looking at” how he might, legally, seek a third term. The future took center stage on Sunday, as Vance and Rubio made the rounds on the weekend political shows to defend Trump’s decisions, tout the strikes and spar with the hosts.

“With Rubio and Vance directly in the background during Trump’s announcement, they are presented as being in lockstep with the president on this,” Kyle Kondik, a political analyst at the University of Virginia, said Monday. “And that will be something Vance or Rubio will have to explain if they are ever running for office in the future and decide they don’t want to be in lockstep with Trump on Iran.”

For the two potential 2028 Republican presidential hopefuls, a prolonged war with Iran — and Trump’s floating of regime change in Tehran — could complicate things.

“It’s not politically correct to use the term, ‘Regime Change,’” Trump wrote on social media Sunday afternoon. “But if the current Iranian Regime is unable to MAKE IRAN GREAT AGAIN, why wouldn’t there be a Regime change???”

Laura James, an analyst at private security firm Oxford Analytica, said in a Monday brief that a still-possible diplomatic outcome might be derailed if Trump’s words “come to be seen as core U.S. policy.”

“Even if there is no new escalation, renewed talks will be complicated by Tehran’s increasingly extreme distrust of all parties involved,” she said. “Trump’s social media comments calling for ‘regime change’ and ‘unconditional surrender’ have made it difficult for Tehran to seek a ceasefire without appearing weak. The U.S. scheduling of talks in Oman when it was aware of the planned Israeli operation, and later its own attack only a few days into Trump’s apparent two-week deadline, are seen in Iran as evidence of U.S. perfidy.”

The Iranian government on Monday launched retaliatory missile strikes at U.S. military bases in Qatar and Iraq, though Trump later revealed that Tehran had given “early notice” that the strikes were coming as he urged all sides, including Israel, to stand down.

“Iran has officially responded to our Obliteration of their Nuclear Facilities with a very weak response, which we expected, and have very effectively countered,” Trump wrote on social media. “I want to thank Iran for giving us early notice, which made it possible for no lives to be lost, and nobody to be injured. Perhaps Iran can now proceed to Peace and Harmony in the Region, and I will enthusiastically encourage Israel to do the same.”

Partial ownership

The 40-year-old Vance and 54-year-old Rubio, as members of Trump’s war council, will have partial ownership of whatever happens next. But whether a regime change in Iran, which the president had ruled out last week, has become a Trump goal remains murky.

“This mission was not, has not been about regime change,” Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, who stood to Rubio’s left in the East Room, told reporters Sunday at the Pentagon. “The president authorized a precision operation to neutralize the threats to our national interests posed by the Iranian nuclear program and the collective self-defense of our troops and our ally, Israel.”

Asked Monday about Trump’s social media post on regime change, White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt said: “The president was simply raising that as a possibility. The president’s posture, and our military posture, has not changed. The president was just simply raising a question (that) I think many people around the world are asking: If they refuse to engage in diplomacy moving forward, why shouldn’t the Iranian people rise up against this brutal terrorist regime?”

In their TV appearances Sunday, Rubio and Vance had the opportunity to remind Republican voters of their roles in the Iran talks and strikes.

It was the vice president who delivered perhaps the aftermath’s most memorable line, when he assured ABC News host Jonathan Karl that “no, we’re not at war with Iran, Jon — we’re at war with Iran’s nuclear program. And I think the president took decisive action to destroy that program last night.”

That attempt to divorce the Iranian government from the nuclear program it started, however, appeared to defy geopolitical realities.

Vance praised Trump’s decision to order the strikes, but he also tried to pressure Iranian leaders to avoid further escalating the conflict, which began when Israel concluded that Tehran was not serious about talks with the Trump administration and had moved closer than ever to having a nuclear weapon.

“They really have to choose a pathway (of) are they going to go down the path of continued war, of funding terrorism, of seeking a nuclear weapon, or are they going to work with us to give up nuclear weapons permanently?” he said on ABC’s “This Week.”

“But if they decide they’re going to attack our troops, if they decide they’re going to continue to try to build a nuclear weapon, then we are going to respond to that with overwhelming force,” Vance added. “So, really, what happens next is up to the Iranians.”

‘Playing games’

For his part, Rubio cast the situation as Trump being forced to act, while also giving Iranian leaders another chance to negotiate.

“I think they should choose the route of peace,” Rubio said on “Face the Nation” on CBS. “We have done everything. We have bent over backwards, OK, to create a deal with these people. … If they call right now and say, ‘We want to meet, let’s talk about this,’ we’re prepared to do that. The president’s made that clear from the very beginning.”

Rubio also sparred with CBS News anchor Margaret Brennan in the sort of exchange Trump and his MAGA base often cheer.

“You don’t know what you’re talking about,” Rubio told Brennan after she asked if U.S. officials may not have had clear intelligence that the Iranian supreme leader had ordered the building of a nuclear weapon. “And the people who say that, it doesn’t matter if the order was given. They have everything they need to build nuclear weapons.”

The secretary of state also flashed his Trump-like ability to use questions as a verbal weapon, saying of the Iranian nuclear site, Fordo, that was hit by U.S. B-2 bomber aircraft: “Why would you bury things in a mountain, 300 feet under the ground?”

Some Democratic lawmakers have warned that Trump appears to be ignoring America’s troubled history in the Middle East.

House Armed Services member John Garamendi of California said Monday on social media that the U.S. was “about to be sucked into another war by (Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin) Netanhayu. Trump promised to end endless wars, but now he’s bringing us closer to another Middle East war and is putting U.S. service members at risk.”

Senate Foreign Relations member Christopher S. Murphy of Connecticut wrote on X: “Our president knows nothing about history. And history tells us that the United States’ hubris about the efficacy of military action in the Middle East is almost universally wrong.”

“I’ve been briefed on the intelligence — there is no evidence Iran posed an imminent threat to the United States,” he added. “That makes this attack illegal.”

But the former rival Trump once mocked as “Lil’ Marco” — but who has since become his administration’s Mr. Fix It — contended that Trump would still rather negotiate an end to the conflict, while noting his boss’ newly evident hawkish side.

“His preference is to deal with this issue diplomatically. But he also told them we had 60 days to make progress or something else was going to happen,” Rubio told CBS News. “They thought they were dealing with a different kind of leader, like the kinds of leaders they have been playing games with for the last 30 or 40 years. And they found out that’s not the case.”

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