It was a war JD Vance never wanted. Now the US vice president has been tasked with ending it.
Vance heads to Pakistan this week with orders from President Donald Trump to turn the shaky Iran ceasefire into a lasting peace deal.
For the 41-year-old Vance, who has kept a notably low profile during the Middle East conflict, it will be one of the biggest moments of his career.
But the man widely regarded as a leading contender in the 2028 US presidential election will face huge challenges too when talks begin Saturday in Islamabad.
“I cannot think of a case where the vice president ran formal negotiations like this,” Aaron Wolf Mannes, a lecturer at the University of Maryland School of Public Policy and an expert on the American vice presidency’s role in foreign policy, told AFP.
“This is high risk, high reward.”