J.D. Vance, America First or Israel First?

Trump's new VP pick is being touted as an anti-interventionist but his views on the Middle East are anything but.

Donald Trump has made his pick for Vice President, Senator, and author of “Hilbilly Elegy”, J.D Vance. For some, this is being touted as a blow to neo-conservatives. “Breaking Points” co-host Saagar Enjeti called Vance’s nomination as VP “the biggest blow to neocon establishment in DC since Trump's election in 2016” and the Washinton Post has called him an “isolationist on foreign policy”. While it is true that Vance bucks the neo-con establishment on a few issues such as opposing the proxy war in Ukraine and Iraq war, his views on the Middle East show he is in full support of backing Israel’s genocidal war in Gaza and getting more involved in wars against their enemies in the region such as Iran.

J.D. Vance: A Christian Zionist and Iran Hawk

Vance has been a strong supporter of Israel and their genocide in Gaza which has killed almost 40,000 people so far. Vance has made it clear he wants America to continue its close relationship with the genocidal apartheid state of Israel saying:

“…it (Israel) is a real ally in the sense that we’re not just sort of sharing interests, we’re actually sharing common values.” 

and

“Because of that, I think there are things that we can do with Israel that we just can’t successfully do with other countries, and we should have a little bit of humility about that fact.” 

When giving a speech to the anti-war think tank Quicy Insitute he endorsed Israel’s genocide in Gaza saying:

“I’m supportive of Israel and their war against Hamas”.

Vance even made a Christian religious argument to justify why America should support the war in Gaza saying:

“a majority of citizens of this country think that their Savior, and I count myself a Christian, was born and died and resurrected in that narrow little strip of territory on the Mediterranean.”

Vance has also been supportive of Trump’s foreign policy in the Middle East, defending his policy of declaring Jerusalem as the capital of Isreal saying:

“I Think Trump was very scusesful in the Middle East, and hillariously was met with extraordinary hair on fire rhetoric when he actually did move the embassy to Jeruselum.”

Vance also supported Trump’s Middle East policy saying

 “I think it was very positive for the region and certainly positive for the state of Israel.”

While Trump’s Middle East policies certainly were good for the state of Israel, they were horrible for almost everyone else in the region who Israel deemed an enemy such as Palestinians, Syrians, Yemenis, and Iranians. Trump was one of the most pro-Israel presidents in history (that’s saying something) declaring Jeruselum as the capital of Israel, supporting illegal settlements in the West Bank, giving Israel the occupied Golan Heights, and backing their slaughter of 223 Palestinian protestors in Gaza. Trump also ratcheted up tensions with Israel’s enemies in the region such as Iran, Syria, and Yemen. In Iran, Trump withdrew from the Iran deal and placed crippling sanctions on the country. He also killed Qasem Soleimani, one of Iran’s top generals. In Syria, Trump also placed crippling sanctions on the country and bragged that the U.S. was “stealing the oil” while illegally occupying one-third of Syria. In Yemen, Trump vetoed a bill that would have ended support for Saudi Arabia’s genocidal war on the country. This pro-Israel hawkish foreign policy is something that Vance considers “very sucsesfull” and “very positive”.

Vance has also been very supportive of Trump’s Abraham Accords which were touted as a peace deal but in reality, were an Isreali effort to normalize with Arab states like Saudi Arabia, UAE, Bahrain, Sudan, and Morocco to get them to stop supporting the Palestinian cause. It was also a way for Israel to signal to Palestinians that they could normalize relations with Arab States while continuing the occupation and repression of them. As Vox put it:

Many of those and other Arab nations, like Saudi Arabia, are key backers of Palestinians in their decades-long dispute with Israel. But by getting them to interact with Israel, the idea was that they might let their support for the Palestinians slip and side a little closer with the Israelis.

Vance has been strongly supportive of this policy saying

“The Abraham Accords model is the perfect way of building a counterpoint to the Iranians in the Middle East.”

and

“The Abraham Accords… showed real promise of uniting the Israelis with some of the Sunni Arab states” “You’ve… got to enable the Israelis and the Sunni Arab states to work together and actually provide a counterbalance to Iran” 

Vance has also been supportive of the idea of an alliance between the U.S., Israel, and Sunni-led states such as Saudi Arabia to take out official enemy states such as Iran saying:

“There are all of these weird ways in which a Sunni-Israel alliance is very, very good economically, diplomatically, militarily for the Israelis but, of course, also for us.” 

Reason Magazine has pointed out that despite being labeled as a “peace deal” the Abrhams Accords have drawn the U.S. into more conflicts in the Middle East saying:

The accords have allowed these countries "to push for even greater U.S. military entanglements" in the region, including a U.S.-led air defense alliance, according to a Quincy Institute report on Emirati lobbying. Saudi Arabia is currently demanding a formal U.S. defense pact in order to join the accords.

Reason also pointed out that the idea of an American, Isreali, and Sunni alliance to go after official enemies in the region is something neo-cons have been pushing for since the 90s saying:

Vance wouldn't be the first to try selling a U.S.-Israeli-Sunni alliance as a way to lighten America's load. In 1996, a group of prominent neoconservatives wrote the "Clean Break" report, calling on Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to adopt a policy of Israeli "self-reliance." The authors envisioned Israel working together with Sunni states to "contain, destabilize, and roll-back" Iranian, Syrian, and Palestinian threats.

Along with this, Vance is also in favor of direct military intervention in Iran. He called the Iran deal a “disaster” and called for bombing Iran to “punch them hard”. The only times Vance has criticized Biden’s foreign policy in the Middle East has been because he thinks it has not been hawkish enough. He attacked Biden for not giving Israel enough support for its genocide in Gaza saying

“Joe Biden has done nothing to help our ally Israel. Joe Biden has made it harder and harder for Israel to win that war”

Vance has also gone after Biden’s strikes in Yemen and Iraq, not from an anti-war perspective, but because he did not think they went far enough calling them “weak little bombing runs”.

Against Ukraine but for other wars.

Vance deserves credit for opposing the proxy war in Ukraine but he only opposes it because he would rather spend the money and arms on other wars for Israel. In his speech at the Quincy Insitute, he said:

“It’s sort of weird that this town assumes that Israel and Ukraine are exactly the same. They’re not, of course, and I think it’s important to analyze them in separate buckets.”

One of the issues he brought up as to why he was against the proxy war in Ukraine was because the weapons sent to Ukraine should have gone to Israel saying:

(The Ukraine proxy war) “forced the Israelis to empty their munitions stockpile and give it all to the Ukrainians,"

Vance may oppose sending arms endlessly to Ukraine but he supports sending them endlessly to back Israel’s genocide in Gaza and wants the U.S. to be involved in more wars in the Middle East against Israel’s enemies.