Vice President JD Vance is increasingly becoming the face of Washington’s negotiations with Iran — setting him up to claim victory if the agreement is successful, or to take the fall if talks with the historically intransigent adversary collapse.

President Donald Trump said as much yesterday in France: “If it works out, I’m going to take the credit. If it doesn’t work out, I’m blaming JD,” Trump quipped on the sidelines of the G7 summit, hours before signing the agreement alongside French President Emmanuel Macron in Versailles.

Trump is far from the only Republican in Washington to tie Vance to the deal. Some GOP legislators swiftly moved to tie Vance to the MOU — hours after it was announced. Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-SC), who has long advocated for military pressure against Iran, was one of the first, saying Sunday that it was “imperative that the architect of the deal, Vice President Vance and his negotiating partners, be part of the process in presenting the final deal to Congress.”

But the pressure on Vance quickly has spread through the party. On Wednesday, Sen. Josh Hawley (R-MO), a longtime backer of the president who is largely aligned with the GOP’s isolationist wing (where Vance has also found his political home), told reporters, “I wish the VP all the best of luck.” Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX), without mentioning Vance by name, said that in moving forward with the MOU, “the president, unfortunately, is receiving bad advice once again.”

The criticism of Vance over the agreement with Iran extends beyond the capital. Conservative commentator Ben Shapiro said on Fox News on Wednesday that the MOU “appears to be, just from the text, a disaster that does not achieve any of the actual signal goals that were set by the administration at the beginning.” Directly addressing Vance’s role, Shapiro said, “The vice president of the United States, the chief negotiator on this particular project, has not well served the president.” Read more here on Shapiro’s comments.

Vance’s high-profile presence around the Iran negotiations draws attention to other senior members of the Trump administration — including Secretary of State Marco Rubio and Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth — who have been notably absent from the White House’s public efforts to talk up the MOU.

Axios reported earlier this week that Rubio and Hegseth — who during the course of the war with Iran had often been front and center explaining the administration’s policies and actions — had opposed the MOU, while Vance, White House Special Envoy Steve Witkoff and Jared Kushner backed the agreement. 

Rubio, who has long taken a more hawkish approach to foreign policy — not just on Iran, but also on China, Russia, Cuba and other U.S. adversaries — was on hand this week at the G7. Rubio has been in France this week with Trump and was at his side when the president signed the agreement, but has largely avoided publicly commenting on the deal and its contours.

Iran has long boasted of its ability to drag out negotiations, betting (usually correctly) that it can take the economic hits and outlast the West. It may well be that Vance, who worked in venture capital and had not yet entered politics during the Obama administration’s yearslong talks that led to the 2015 Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action, is less familiar with Iran’s intransigence and ability to slow-walk diplomacy. 

After the midterms — now less than five months away — attention will shift to 2028. By then, if the administration’s timeline holds, a deal with Iran will either have been struck or will have collapsed. For Vance, who along with Rubio is expected to make a White House bid in two years’ time, the failure to bring about a resolution with Iran could become a major liability in the 2028 GOP primary.