Vance: Israel should finish war as quickly as possible, partner Sunni states against Iran
Trump’s VP choice slams Biden for harming ‘Israel’s war to actually take out Hamas,’ failing to use infrastructure put in place by Abraham Accords to weaken the Islamic Republic
The Times of Israel
Jul 16, 2024
Sen. J.D. Vance of Ohio was nominated on Monday as the Republican party’s vice presidential candidate
Ohio Senator JD Vance, fresh off his nomination on Monday as the Republican party’s vice presidential candidate, accused US President Joe Biden of “making it harder and harder” for Israel to vanquish Hamas, claiming his policies were unnecessarily prolonging the war and preventing Israeli-Saudi rapprochement.
Vance, a bestselling author who is the freshman senator from Ohio, said that Israel should win and end the war in Gaza “as quickly as possible,” to enable the “Israelis and the Sunni Arab states” to form a united front against Iran.
Former US president Donald Trump on Monday named Vance as his running mate at the Republican National Convention in Milwaukee, where Trump himself was officially nominated as the party’s candidate for president.
Trump’s selection of Vance was seen as cementing the former president’s hold on the party, with some analysts saying Trump was effectively anointing the senator to be his successor. In choosing Vance — a harsh Trump critic turned fierce loyalist — the former US president eschewed more traditional conservatives in favor of a populist firebrand with a notable isolationist streak.
Speaking to Fox News on Monday, Vance concurred with host Sean Hannity’s statement that Biden had “surrendered the war on terrorism” by failing to sufficiently support Israel in its war on Hamas, sparked by the terror group’s shock October 7 onslaught that killed nearly 1,200 people and saw 251 taken hostage.
“What Biden has done is the worst of all possible worlds,” said Vance of the US president’s policy on the war in Gaza. “He has prolonged the war, Israel’s war to actually take out Hamas, but in the process, he’s made it harder for us to really move towards a sustainable peace.”
“You want two things to happen,” said Vance. “Number one is, you want to get this war over and as quickly as possible, because the longer it goes on the harder [Israel’s] situation becomes.
“But second,” he continued, “after the war, you want to reinvigorate that peace process between Israel, Saudi Arabia, the Jordanians and so forth.
“Maybe the most important diplomatic issue of the Trump administration was the Abraham Accords,” said Vance, referring to the 2020 normalization agreements the administration brokered between Israel, the United Arab Emirates, Bahrain, and later Morocco.
“I didn’t think I’d see that in my lifetime,” he added.
“The Abraham Accords… showed real promise of uniting the Israelis with some of the Sunni Arab states,” said Vance, asserting that “you’ve… got to enable the Israelis and the Sunni Arab states to work together and actually provide a counterbalance to Iran.”
“A lot of people recognize that we need to do something with Iran, but not these weak little bombing runs,” said Vance, apparently referring to US strikes on Iranian proxies in the Middle East.
“The most important part of the Trump doctrine of foreign policy is you don’t commit America’s troops unless you really have to, but when you do, you punch and you punch hard,” said Vance, a former US Marine.
“If you’re going to punch the Iranians, you punch them hard,” he said, asserting that Trump had done just that when he ordered the assassination of Qassem Soleimani, commander of Iran’s elite Quds Force, in early 2020.
Contrary to criticisms that the assassination would lead to a “broader war,” Vance argued, “it actually brought peace, it actually checked the Iranians and slowed them down a little bit.”
“Joe Biden’s done nothing,” Vance claimed. “You have the infrastructure there, sitting there, to weaken Iran, to strengthen our ally Israel. Joe Biden’s done nothing with it, Donald Trump would reinvigorate it.”
He said Israel “didn’t have a better friend than Donald Trump.”
The vice presidential candidate further accused Biden of failing to pursue American energy independence.
“We’re sitting on the Saudi Arabia of natural gas in Ohio and Pennsylvania,” said Vance. “Joe Biden would rather buy this stuff from Iran than buy it from Pennsylvania workers.”
It was not clear what Vance was referring to, as the US does not buy oil from Iran and has sanctions in place against countries that conduct significant petroleum trade with the country.
“We could be the main source of energy in the world,” said Vance. “That would actually weaken Russia and Iran and some of these other regimes.”
The US senator reiterated his opposition to further US support for Kyiv in its defensive war against Russia, which invaded Ukraine in 2022. The continued support has become a hot-button issue among Republicans, with supporters of Trump’s “America First” policy overwhelmingly opposed to it.
“I think what President Trump has promised to do is to go in there, negotiate with the Russians and the Ukrainians, bring this thing to a rapid close so that America can focus on the real issue, which is China,” Vance told Fox News. “That’s the biggest threat to our country and we’re completely distracted from it.”
Speaking in May to the Quincy Institute, an isolationist foreign policy think tank, Vance explained why his isolationism toward Ukraine did not extend to Israel. According to Vance, the alliance with Israel benefited the US, including on defense.
“Israel is one of the most dynamic, certainly on a per capita basis, one of the most dynamic and technologically advanced countries in the world,” Vance said, in comments carried by the Jewish Insider, noting the country’s efforts to “actually give us missile-defense parity.
“That’s a very important national security objective of the United States of America, and that’s something we’re working with one of the most innovative economies in the world to accomplish,” said Vance at the time.
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