Tangle - Vance leads peace talks with Iran.

Episode Date: June 22, 2026

On Sunday, Vice President JD Vance and a team of U.S. negotiators met with Iranian officials in Switzerland to begin peace negotiations. The vice president took a leading role in finalizing the memorandum of understanding (MOU) that Iran and the U.S. signed last week, and on Sunday, Vance called for a broad reset of relations after nearly four months of war. He also rebuked Israeli politicians for their criticism of the recent MOU, drawing scrutiny from some conservatives and raising broader questions about his prospects as a future party standard-bearer. Ad-free podcasts are here!To listen to this podcast ad-free, and to enjoy our subscriber only premium content, go to ReadTangle.com to sign up!The Father’s Day episode.In a special Father’s Day edition of Suspension of the Rules, Isaac, Ari, and Kmele are joined on the podcast by two guests: Executive Producer Jon Lall and Isaac’s father (and Tangle editor) Bailey Saul. The five of them represent different phases of fatherhood — from soon-to-be father to dad of two school-aged children to three-kid veteran (and grandfather) — and discuss what they’ve learned through their separate experiences. You can listen to the special edition here.You can read today's podcast⁠ ⁠⁠here⁠⁠⁠ and today’s “Under the radar” story ⁠here⁠ and today’s “Have a nice day” story ⁠here⁠.You can subscribe to Tangle by clicking here or drop something in our tip jar by clicking here. Take the survey: How much responsibility do you think Vice President Vance has for negotiating an end to the war in Iran? Let us know.Our Executive Editor and Founder is Isaac Saul. Our Executive Producer is Jon Lall.This podcast written by: Isaac Saul and audio edited and mixed by Dewey Thomas. Music for the podcast was produced by Diet 75.Our newsletter is edited by Managing Editor Ari Weitzman, Senior Editor Will Kaback, Lindsey Knuth, Bailey Saul, and Audrey Moorehead. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

From executive producer Isaac Saul, this is Tangle. Morning, good afternoon, and good evening, and welcome to the Tangle podcast, a place we get views from across the political spectrum, some independent thinking, and a little bit of my take. I'm your host, Isaac Saul. I'm fresh off celebrating Father's Day for the second time ever. Also celebrating my five-year wedding anniversary. In case you missed our special Father's Day podcast over the weekend, I had my dad on. on the show, John Lull, our executive producer, came out from behind the studio curtain to join us. It was a super special, unique episode. It's up on our podcast feed,

and it is also up in our YouTube channel right now where we talk about fatherhood, parenting, some of the parents to be on the Tangle team. I think it was a really fun episode. I think you guys will enjoy it if you haven't checked it out yet. Yesterday also marked another less joyous anniversary. It has been one year now since the United States bombed Iran's nuclear facilities and Vice President J.D. Vance went on national television to assure Americans that we weren't

about to enter a major conflict. Fast forward to this past weekend, and Vance is leading negotiations to try to end the major conflict in Iran. More on that in a little bit. Outside of Vance and Iran, we're also answering a reader question about how a new Hawaii law and citizens united are running into each other head to head. And we have a rather shocking under the radar story about an investigation into a pay-for-play clemency scheme

that the Trump administration may have quashed. This is going to be a great episode. I'm looking forward to it. I'm going to hand it over to John Lull for today's main story and I'll be back for my take. Thanks, Isaac, and welcome, everybody.

Hope y'all had a wonderful weekend. We're going to get started with today's quick hits. First up, British Prime Minister Kier Starrmer announced that he will resign as leader of the Labor Party and as Prime Minister. Number two, U.S. Park police officers arrested former U.S. Olympian David Hearn for allegedly vandalizing the refurbished reflecting pool in the capital. Hearn denied wrongdoing and said he was inspecting a piece of the pool's liner that had

already detached. Number three, President Donald Trump unveiled the aircraft gifted to the U.S. by Qatar that will serve as the new Air Force One. Number four, Italian Foreign Minister Antonio Tajani canceled his plan. trip to the United States in response to President Trump's claim that Italian Prime Minister Georgia Maloney had begged for a photo with him at the G7 summit in France last week. Maloney called the comments completely fabricated. And number five, right-wing candidate Abolado de la Esriela is projected to win Colombia's presidential

election, defeating left-wing Senator Ivan Cepeda by a narrow margin. President Trump endorsed de la Espruella in June. Into the Middle East now, the U.S. and Iran continue their high-stake talks in Switzerland, over the weekend to finalize a peace deal. So despite some recent progress here, officials warned that several obstacles, they still remain. Vice President J.D. Vance leading the U.S. negotiating team says there's plenty of headway when it comes to these negotiations, but is also reporting some progress in the talks as well.

Obviously, it's that nuclear program. On Sunday, Vice President J.D. Vance and a team of U.S. negotiators met with Iranian officials in Switzerland to begin. in peace negotiations. The vice president took a leading role in finalizing the memorandum of understanding that Iran and the U.S. signed last week, and on Sunday, Vance called for a broad reset of relations after nearly four months of war. He also rebuked Israeli politicians for their criticism of the recent MOU, drawing scrutiny from some conservatives and raising broader questions about his prospects as a future party standard bearer. The MOU that the U.S. and Iran signed on Wednesday extended a ceasefire

that began on April 7th and outlined the terms of a permanent peace deal, the current round of discussion centers on Iran's nuclear program, along with reopening the Strait of Hermuz and removing U.S. sanctions on Iran. Vance and U.S. officials met with Iran's parliamentary speaker, Mohamed Bagar Khalibov and foreign minister Abbas Arachi for approximately 80 minutes on Sunday in a discussion mediated by Pakistani and Qatari officials. Beforehand, Vice President Vance suggested that the talks were an opportunity to turn over a new leaf in U.S. Iran relations, adding,

if Iran's leadership is willing to give up on being a driver of regional instability, if they are willing to give up nuclear weapons ambitions in the long term, then the United States is willing to fundamentally transform our relationship. On Sunday, Iran claimed that Israeli strikes in Lebanon violated the MOU and said it would again block the Strait of Hermuz in retaliation. President Donald Trump threatened to resume airstrikes in Iran if the waterway remained closed, also calling on Iran to restrain Hezbollah's attacks on Israel. If they don't, we'll hit Iran very hard again, just like we did last week, only harder,

Trump wrote on truth social. Iranian officials reportedly suspended peace talks in Switzerland in response to Trump's comments, but talks resumed through intermediaries and are expected to continue throughout the week. Separately, Vance has criticized Israeli leaders for questioning the U.S. strategy with Iran. On Thursday, responding to questions about Israeli cabinet officials' objections to the MOU, Vance said, was in the cabinet of the Israeli government, I might not be attacking the only powerful ally that I have anywhere left in the world. Some Republican lawmakers objected to the comments.

I thought JD's comments yesterday were absolutely inappropriate and frankly disgusting. Representative Randy Fine of Florida said on Friday, other Republicans have questioned the MOU's terms without naming Vance explicitly. Senator Ted Cruz said that he thinks President Trump is getting some really bad advice on this deal, calling out provisions for a $300 billion Iranian reconstruction and sanctions relief. Today, we'll explore Vance's role in peace negotiations and his evolving position within the Trump administration with views from the right and the left.

And then Isaac's take. We'll be right back after this quick break. All right, first up, let's start with what the right is saying. Some on the right question Vance's motives on the Iran deal. Others suggest pro-Israel conservatives should view him favorably, but cautiously. Others say Vance must draw a clear contrast between Trump and himself. In the free press, Eli Lake said Vance tries to have it both ways on the Iran deal. For many mainstream Republicans, the new memorandum of understanding between the U.S. and Iran

is nothing more than American surrender, Lake Road. To Vance, though, the doubters have it all wrong. The vice president argued that America wins either way with the argument. Either they get nothing, we've destroyed their nuclear program and the street of Hermuz is open, or they fundamentally transform themselves, and that's a big win too. That is one interpretation, but details emerging about the MOU that was announced on Sunday, show that Iran has already won concessions even before the official negotiations began. The vice president remains Trump's heir apparent and the likely Republican

presidential nominee for 2028. In order to win that election, Vance will need the kind of broad coalition that propelled Trump to the White House in 2024. As Vance explained in an interview with Megan Kelly on Tuesday, the coalition that elected Trump the second time included Tucker Carlson, Joe Rogan and Kelly, Lake said. All of that sounds fine. The problem is that the tenor of Kellys and Carlson's attacks on Trump and his pro-Israel supporters has been outrageous. If the populist right believes that pro-Israel Americans are more loyal to a foreign power than to the U.S., then what does it say about Vance's own support for the war that they opposed?

In Pj media, Scott Pinsker asked, should pro-Israel conservatives trust J.D. Vance? On one side, pro-Israel Republicans, a vast majority of the MAGA base, are up in arms over vice president J.D. Vance's rhetorical smackdown of Israel's opposition to the MOU. The vice president's words were biting, harsh, and uncomfortable to hear, Pinsker said. On the other side, plenty of Republicans nodded in enthusiastic agreement. Without question, groepers, bigots, and Jew haters exist, and plenty of podcasters make a living by catering to that demo. But there are also millions of fair-minded Republicans who view America's relationship with Israel as an investment that's in the red. There are pro-Israel Republicans who have placed Vance's

pattern of behavior within the Groyper anti-Semite paradigm. He must be one of them. On the other side, there are fair-minded Republican isolationists who view the anti-Vance pushback as a grotesque overreach and eerily similar to leftists who cry racism at every turn, Pinsker wrote. Pro-Israel Republicans should trust Vance because his boss has been the most pro-Israel president in U.S. history. That alone earns him the benefit of the doubt. If political decisions reflect personal values, Trump's decision to select Vance as his running mate speaks volumes. In the American conservative, Andrew Day explored Vance's next move. What had seemed to predetermined, Vance, 2028, can no longer be taken for granted. Perhaps that's for the best, both for Vance and the

Republic. American voters have a habit of defying expectations and ruining coronations, Day, said. Vance, to come out on top in the 28 Republican primary, will first need to define himself. In recent years, he's been dogged by the suspicion that he is a cynical power seeker who doesn't believe in much of anything. Because Vance has presented himself as a principled restrainer, the Iran war only magnifies the perception, hobbling the vice president and reviving the question, whose man is J.D. Vance. Vance is number two in an administration that has launched a catastrophic conflict at Israel's urging and on its behalf. While he has found ways to signal that he never fully supported the war, Vance has been obliged to defend it publicly. And America first concerned,

while still preferring him to Rubio, can't be sure where he really stands, Day wrote. As 2028 approaches and voters ponder whether he deserves to be their president, Vance would do very well to become his own man again. And at the very least, that sounds less exhausting than trying to please irreconcilable factions on the unruly American right. All right, that is different what the right is saying, which brings us to what the left is saying. Many on the left see Vance as the fall guy for the administration's failure in Iran. Some suggest he could lead a broader GOP split with Israel. Others say the vice president is caught between his loyalty to Trump and his 28 presidential aspirations. In the Atlantic, Jonathan Chate wrote about the GOP strategy behind making

the vice president own an obvious defeat. Judging by the messaging emanating from across the Republican Party, letting the president claim victory while making the vice president own an obvious defeat is the GOP strategy, Cheate said. If the logic here is contorted, it does make political sense to Republican Hawks who want to elevate Secretary of State Marco Rubio as Trump's successor. The war they supported has ended in failure, but they don't want the party's anti-interventionalist wing to benefit. Therefore, their plan is to blame Vance, who opposed the Iran War all along for the defeat while insulating Rubio. Vance is clearly betting that most Republicans will prefer his version of the story, which presents the Iran war as the latest Trump win

in a line of unbroken victories, Chate wrote. A healthy conservative movement would be able to concede error, rather than resorting to a choose-your-own-adventure ruse in which the war is Trump's if we won and Vance's if we lost. But the movement has decayed to the point that honest analysis is impossible, and prominent Republicans hardly bothered to pretend otherwise. In CNN, Aaron Blake said Vance's threat is the latest sign that the U.S. could be breaking with Israel. The United States joining with Israel to launch a war in the Middle East was always a fraught situation for the long-standing U.S. Israeli alliance. But things seemed to come to a head. Thursday when Vice President J.D. Vance had some blunt and harsh words for Israel,

words that sounded a whole lot like a threat, Blake Rood. Vance's remarks in which he pointed to Israel's worldwide unpopularity were the most striking. He cited how reliant Israel is on American weapons, as well as the need for some Israeli leaders to wake up and smell the reality of the situation that country is in. It's true that Trump often treats allies poorly and in very transactional ways. Look at what's happening right now with Italian Prime Minister Georgia Maloney. But the alliance with Israel has been different. Trump has seemed to view it as more beneficial and almost sacred, even when Netanyahu was personally frustrating him, Blake said. Yet the way Vance spoke about Israel on Thursday sounded a lot like his and Trump's browbeating of Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky.

Remember, have you said thank you once in the Oval Office last year? In Bloomberg, Nia Malika Henderson suggested Trump's Iran deal comes with great risk for J.D. Vance largely owes his political career to Trump, and his political future largely depends on his defense of him and his policies. That now includes the conflict with Iran, a geopolitical blunder of historic proportions. America lost a war that Trump didn't need to start, Henderson wrote. The irony is that Vance privately argued against striking Iran, but has since become the face of the conflict and now the deal. His glib and condescending podcast conversation with New York Times columnist Ross Douthit goes for an hour and is an illustration of one of the iron rules of politics.

If you're explaining, you're losing. In October 2024, when asked what she would have done differently than former President Joe Biden, Kamala Harris infamously said that not a thing comes to mind. She later explained that she was only trying to be loyal to the president, Henderson said. Vance, who has been looking over his shoulder at Rubio's rising status, now has that same problem. He also has the added complication of a vengeful president who sees MAGA as his own and is reluctant to bequeath it. All right, let's head over to Isaac for his tape.

All right, that is it for what the left and the writer's saying, which brings us to my take. Exactly one year ago today, just after the United States announced it had obliterated Iran's nuclear enrichment sites, Vice President J.D. Vance appeared on Meet the Press with a message to Americans. I empathize with Americans who were exhausted after 25 years of foreign entanglements in the Middle East, he said. I understand the concern. But the difference is that back then we had dumb presidents, end quote. Vance insisted that we were not at war with Iran, but instead at war with its nuclear program, that we'd set that program back without getting into some long, drawn-out thing. Some of us were very skeptical about these claims at the time.

A year later, Vance is in Switzerland trying to negotiate an end to an actual war that has destabilized the Middle East, spiked energy prices, cost America billions of dollars and 13 service members their lives, killed thousands of Iranians, and damaged Iran so much, it is now seeking a $300 billion fund to rebuild the country. I don't say all this to remind you, after I wrote about all the times I've been wrong, that I'm sometimes correct about things. I say it because Vance is now a presumptive 28 Republican nominee for president, if not the odds on favorite, and it's important to hold him to account for his statements. Vance has spent the better part of the last year trying to defend a war that he clearly did not support.

He's now trying to defend a deal that shares a lot in common with Obama's Iran deal, the joint comprehensive plan of action, which Vance and every Republican have spent the better part of a decade lambasting all to get us back to a pre-war status quo, except now our threat of military force is less credible.

Iran has much greater control over one of the most important shipping lanes in the world, and we're apparently on the hook to find a way to rebuild Iran after the destruction we just wrought. The bad news for Vance is that I'm not the only one ready to hold him to account. The president joked last week that if the deal works out, he'll take credit for it, but if it doesn't, he'll blame Vance.

I'm no body language expert, but I noticed that Secretary of State Marco Rubio, another 28 contender who is widely reported to oppose this deal, didn't so much as crack a smile. I don't think the president was kidding, and I don't think Rubio finds any of this funny. Many of Vance's supporters who cheered when Trump picked him as his running mate are now aghast at the scale of his failure to keep us out of another Middle East engagement. It was a core promise of President Trump's 2024 campaign and one of the core talking points Vance repeated throughout the race. A prominent conservative pundit who supported all three Trump campaigns and Vance's rise to vice president described Vance to me as one of the most disingenuous, ideologically flexible politicians he'd ever encountered. Once a die-hard supporter of the vice presidents, he now feels spurned and disgusted by what he's morphed into.

In order to pull off this high-wire act of working for the current president and maintaining support for his own future candidacy, Vance has quite the task. He has to never criticize Trump or his decision to start a war with Iran and simultaneously sell a deal to the public that effectively cements an American loss, all while trying to prevent Iran and the U.S., Israel, Hezbollah, and the Gulf states from continuing to fire rockets at each other. And then he'll have to convince everyone that whatever post-war order this deal creates

is better than our situation a year ago. How are things going so far? Well, according to Axios, since the MOU was signed on Wednesday, Iran said it was closing the Strait of Hormuz again, though it didn't in practice, per U.S. officials. Israel intermittently bombed Lebanon, and President Trump threatened to seize and toll the strait,

kill Iran's peace negotiators, and send Syria into fight Hezbollah. I'd say not great. At the same time, even though Vance's position is precarious, he's the one who stepped on to the Highwire Act in the first place, and I can understand why. As Nick Katagio argued in the dispatch, Vance was enforced against his will to be the fall guy.

Instead, he likely believes that being the face of ending the war will be better than being the face of starting it. I actually think that's a smarter bet than sideline himself on the issue completely. He's also positioning Israel as a scapegoat, which is both cynical and wise politically. Israel now has an overwhelmingly negative reputation on both sides of the aisle, a reality most U.S. politicians have been slow to respond to. I can hardly blame Americans for this pivot. Three years of watching the destruction in Gaza, the expansion of settlements in the West Bank,

and the continued bombing of Lebanon left me questioning my own Zionism. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is a violence-prone leader. credibly accused of corruption who sold Trump on the Iran war, which has now backfired spectacularly for the United States. For Americans with much looser attachments to Israel than I have, questions about why we continue to tie our fate to the decision makers in its government, especially as some of them make obscene genocidal threats, are bound to pop up. After Trump's administration reap mountains of frustration for giving Israel most of what it wanted in the last 18 months, Vance is now passing that frustration on.

Even if Vance distancing himself from Israel is politically prudent, I'm fairly confident whatever comes next won't be good for his political future. This war is an albatross around the administration's neck. Iran is clearly and rightfully feeling empowered. Long before he got involved in negotiations, Vance chose to leave the Senate and tie his fate to Trump's, and now all his future political aspirations rests on the hope that the president doesn't torch him publicly for his role in the Iran peace agreement.

Is that a bet you'd want to make if you were Vance? Remember how Trump's last vice president, Mike Pence, ended his tenure, hiding in his office while a bunch of now-Trump pardon radicals stalk the capital chanting to hang him? However you may feel about Vance, and I personally do not appreciate his chameleon style, it's a tragic circumstance for one of the few people who is actually right about the damage this war would bring. Despite being right, his Highwire Act is about to turn him into a center stage fall guy. That's the price of doing business with a president who rarely takes accountability for his own actions, but it seems to be a gamble Vance is willing and able to make.

All right, that is it for my take. I'm going to send it over to Audrey Moorhead, who has a staff dissent today. Thanks, Isaac. This is Associate Editor Audrey Moorhead with a staff dissent. I disagree with Isaac's assertion that Vance's Israel critical positioning is a politically smart move. at least for 2028. Yes, anti-Israel sentiment is growing on both sides of the political spectrum, especially among young people, and that trend will probably continue for the foreseeable future. In that sense, Vance is running ahead of the game. But most Republican voters still view Israel favorably, especially older voters and one of the largest segments of the GOP voter base, white evangelicals.

I'm skeptical that that will change much by the time the 2028 primaries roll around. If Vance wants to make it to general election, he'll need to win those voters over. And I don't think attacking one of our few allies in the Middle East will help in the short run. That's all for me, so I'll pass it back to Isaac. We'll be right back after this quick break. All right, thank you, Audrey, and that brings us to your questions answered. This one's from Kim and Chattanooga, Tennessee. Kim said, can y'all please explain what's happening with Hawaii's law that undermines Citizens United? In May, Hawaii Governor Josh Green, a Democrat, signed SB 2471. The new law asserts that artificial persons created under state law or corporations

only have the power to act in ways that carry out their purposes, specifically excluding the power to spend money or contribute anything of value to influence elections or ballot measures. The law appears to directly undermine the landmark 2010 Supreme Court case Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission, which found that corporate spending in a election, elections is protected under the First Amendment and cannot be limited as long as it is coordinated independently of a candidate's campaign. Hawaii's new law attempts to restrict a corporation's power

to spend on elections in a way that directly contradicts Citizens United in practice, but not on paper. Instead of limiting a corporation's power to spend on political campaigns, Hawaii is denying corporations operating in the state that power in the first place. The bill tries to get around citizens united by arguing that corporations only have the powers the state chooses to grant them and that Hawaii can decline to grant the power to spend money on elections, said Colin Moore, a political analyst at the University of Hawaii Manoa. As a state law, Hawaii's SV-2471 would only apply to Hawaiian elections, meaning it will not impact campaign spending in other states and at the federal level if it stands. Hawaii Attorney General Ann Lopez believes that the law is not

constitutional. Citizens United did not by itself confer First Amendment rights onto corporations, Lopez said. It merely interpreted political spending as a First Amendment right that a corporation, as a collection of citizens, already has. SB 2471 will take effect on July 1, 27. After that day, and unless it is overturned in court, no corporation will legally be allowed to spend money on political campaigns in Hawaii. All right, that is it for your questions answered. I'm going to send it back to John for the rest of the pod, and I'll see you guys tomorrow. Have a good one. Peace. Thanks, Isaac. Here's your under the radar story for today, folks. On Sunday, the New York Times reported that Trump administration appointees may have pressured federal prosecutors to drop an

investigation into President Trump's commutation of David Gentile, who served roughly two weeks of a seven-year prison sentence for participating in a $1.6 billion fraud scheme. Prosecutors with the U.S. Attorney's Office in the Eastern District of New York had begun exploring whether Gentile had discussed making $2.5 million in payments to those close to the president to facilitate his commutation. However, according to the Times report, the Eastern District dropped its investigation shortly after U.S. Associate Deputy Attorney General Akash Singh expressed concern about the probe to prosecutors. The New York Times has this story, and there's a link in today's episode description.

And last but not least, our Have a Nice Day story. A puppy in Milwaukee, Wisconsin was near the end of its rope, malnourished, buried under garbage, and stuck in a trash bin heading for the garbage truck. However, he had one stroke of luck. The trash bin fell off Nas-Nals' truck before it could reach the compactor. When Nals and his partner looked inside, they found the puppy and contacted their supervisor, Alex Haverson, who happened to already be driving their way. Halverson pulled the puppy out, fed him his lunch, and drove him to the Milwaukee area

domestic animal control commission. Then, after the puppy returned to health, Halverson decided to adopt him. God knows what he went through, Halverson said. He was buried under garbage and he was still super friendly. Now, Halverson has given the puppy a new home and a new name, PJ. Named after the peanut butter and jelly sandwiches, he fed the puppy on the day he found him. TMJ4 Milwaukee has this story and there's a link in today's episode description.

All right, everybody, that is it for today's episode. As always, if you'd like to support our work, please go to retangle.com where you can sign up for a newsletter membership, podcast membership, or a bundled membership that gets you a discount on both. We'll be right back here tomorrow. For Isaac and the rest of the crew, this is John Lull signing off. Have a great day, y'all. Peace.

Our executive editor and founder is me. Isaac Sall, and our executive producer is John Lull. Today's episode was edited and engineered by Dewey Thomas. Our editorial staff is led by managing editor Ari Weitzman with senior editor Will Kayback and associate editors Audrey Moorhead, Lindsay Canaanooth and Bailey Saul. Music for the podcast was produced by Diet 75. To learn more about Tangle and to sign up for a membership,

please visit our website at reetangle.com.