Sen. J.D. Vance (R-OH), the Republican vice-presidential nominee, claimed in a new interview that pro-Israel Americans responded in a “much more militaristic” way to Oct. 7 than Israelis and argued that Israel’s interests sometimes conflict with those of the United States. 

Vance made the comments during his appearance on “The Tim Dillon Show” after being asked by the podcast host how a Trump-Vance administration would handle the unfolding conflict in the Middle East. 

Vance made the comments during his appearance on “The Tim Dillon Show” after being asked by the podcast host how a Trump-Vance administration would handle the unfolding conflict in the Middle East.

“Obviously, Israel has the right to defend itself, but America’s interest is… pic.twitter.com/X0qV3ZISDJ

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“Obviously, Israel has the right to defend itself, but America’s interest is sometimes going to be distinct, like sometimes we’re going to have overlapping interests, and sometimes we’re going to have distinct interests,” Vance told Dillon. “Our interest, I think very much, is in not going to war with Iran, right? It would be a huge distraction of resources. It would be massively expensive to our country.”

Vance went on to note that he saw a difference in the reactions of pro-Israel Americans and Israelis to the Oct. 7 attack, noting that some in the U.S. were calling for war with Iran at the time. 

“In the reaction to it, what I noticed is that American pro-Israel people, or people who fashioned themselves as pro-Israel, were actually much more militaristic than the Israelis who were living in Israel,” Vance said. “The Israelis were like, OK, Hamas just attacked us. We’re gonna go really screw Hamas up. But of course, yeah, there’s a humanitarian side of that, and we want to try to minimize civilian casualties. But you had Americans saying, ‘Oh … This attack happened on Putin’s birthday, right? So we need to go to war against Russia, and obviously the Iranians funded part of this. We need to go to war with Iran.’”

“Now, I don’t want Iran to get a nuclear weapon and I think we should be very strongly encouraging the Iranians and using all the influence that we have to encourage them to not have a nuclear weapon. I think nuclear proliferation is just a bad idea. Enough people have nukes, and the more people that have nukes, I think the greater the risk of nuclear war. But we just have to be smart about it,” he continued. 

The Ohio senator said that “smart diplomacy” such as the expanding Abraham Accords “really matters” to achieving sustained peace in the region. ”Again, I’m not saying we stick ourselves into the Middle East and start a war here, but look, we recognize [that the] Israelis, Gulf Arab states don’t like Iran, so let the Israelis and the Gulf Arab states provide the counterbalance to Iran,” he said. 

“America doesn’t have to constantly police every region of the world. We should empower people to police their own regions of the world. One, we would save a lot of money. Two, we’d save a lot of focus,” Vance argued of the strategy. 

Vance then criticized the Biden administration for its approach to handling the conflict, arguing that their push to minimize Palestinian civilian casualties has instead prolonged the war and caused more suffering. He surmised that Vice President Kamala Harris pursued such a strategy because “she kind of likes war.”

“Unfortunately, I think Harris, she’s got this weird thing where I actually think she kind of likes war. Maybe she feels like a tough guy about it. I don’t know why it is, but even though they say they want to minimize Palestinian civilian casualties, they pursue the pathway that maximizes those casualties. They say that they’re pro-Israel. They pursue the pathway that has prolonged the war as long as possible, which is bad for Israel, and they seem to be sort of sleepwalking us into war with Iran. It’s like the dumbest of all possible worlds,” Vance said. 

A spokesperson for Vance declined to comment on the remarks.