It's almost anachronistic to watch a sitting Vice President of the United States of America tell the world, in no uncertain terms, that America will do a nuclear deal with Iran with or without the blessing of Israel. Not in private, not in the normal jargon of diplomacy, but broadcast live on prime-time television, on a channel that continues to be the pulpit of the American right wing.

JD Vance's Fox News appearance Tuesday wasn't coincidence. They were a message, intentional and calculated, sent to a number of groups at the same time. “Israel may like that, they may not like that,” Vance said, in reference to a “home run win for the American people.” The comment removed all the "polite fiction" that those two cities had enjoyed maintaining to some degree about the Washington-Jerusalem relationship up to now. While the alliance remains intact, the fissures have become all too apparent to the naked eye.

But to understand what's really going on, one must trace the past 100 days, which, in any measure, have been one of the most consequential periods of Middle East geopolitics since 2003 invasion of Iraq.

How We Got Here

On February 28, 2026, the U.S. and Israel initiate a joint military attack on Iran. The declared aims were to diminish Tehran's ballistic missile capacity and delay its nuclear aims. The war which ensued was a war neither side had fully envisioned. Iran hit back with missile attacks in the region and on March 4 declared the Strait of Hormuz closed to commercial shipping, thereby jolting all commodity markets in the world.

The figures were enormous. In early March, brent crude exceeded $145 per barrel, compared to $72 a barrel that it traded at the end of February. Goldman Sachs has raised its year-end projection for the price of Brent crude to $90 per barrel, saying the continued disruptions in the Gulf and the record rate of global oil consumption, at 11 to 12 million bpd, should keep the price high. Some 27 percent of the world's seaborne crude oil trade and about 20 percent of global LNG volumes transited through the Strait, the 21-mile-wide chokepoint between Iran and Oman, which suddenly became the most important body of water on Earth. Insurance war-risk premiums for ships trying to pass through the area were as high as they have been since the 1980s Tanker War. Shipping lines pulled out. Asian and European energy buyers rushed.

On April 8, a delicate ceasefire was declared, partly as a result of Pakistani mediation. However, the unresolved fundamental issues Iran's nuclear programme, the fate of the Strait and the treatment of Iranian assets worth some $24 billion which have been frozen remained unsolved. Talks have progressed haltingly in Islamabad, languishing and bouncing back, while both sides have carried out a handful of military operations and maintained back channels.

The week that changed the conversation

This past Sunday night, it all came together. Iran responded to Israeli strikes, which violated an understanding reached only days earlier, in Beirut aimed at Hezbollah positions in the north by launching a new volley of missiles. Trump publicly asked Netanyahu to "refrain from retaliation. But according to several reports, Netanyahu had strike aircraft on the runway and ready to go before calling them back, as part of the "tight" phone call during which Trump told him that Israel would be "fighting alone.

The exchange was reportedly at a level that is rare even for their notoriously rough relationship. But previous reports had already established that Trump warned Netanyahu "in no diplomatic terms" that his Lebanon campaign was threatening to "undermine" U.S. negotiations with Tehran.

On Monday, both Iran and Israel said they have suspended exchanges. Trump informed journalists that he hoped a deal could be struck “two or three days.” But the much more significant declaration occurred Tuesday morning, when Vance presented the entire matter as being one of conflicting national interests. Obviously, the U.S. objective is to stop Iran from obtaining a nuclear weapon, the U.S. official said. That is an objective that can be achieved via diplomacy and it trumps any strategic preferences Israel might have with regard to the postwar regional order, he suggested.

The Espionage Layer

Vance's public remarks are even more pointed given the context in which they were made. Several news outlets had reported this week that the Defense Intelligence Agency of the U.S. Pentagon had stepped up its counterintelligence threat assessment for Israel to "critical," the highest level. The reports said Israeli intelligence had been intensifying its monitoring of senior U.S. officials negotiating with Iran, including Trump's top Middle East envoy, the U.S. Defense Department's chief policy official and at least one of his deputies.

The United States and Israel are no strangers to playing gost and spying on each other; that's an open secret in the intel community. But, according to citing U.S. officials, what shifted was the scale and directedness of Israeli efforts. What the DIA worries most about is that Israel is trying to draw a fine line on what Washington will and will not allow in terms of enrichment deadlines, inspections and sanctions relief, so it can knock out results that it doesn't like in advance.

The ramifications for military co-operation are not insignificant. Both countries have been operationally linked during the campaign so far, sharing tactical intelligence with each other. The Pentagon has said it is considering limiting the flow of information to Israeli officers, which would have significant ramifications for joint planning.

The deal is to be finalized at a nuclear level.

The inspections architecture is Vance's major difference from the 2015 deal negotiated by Obama in which Trump disengaged in 2018 partly at Netanyahu's request. The Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA), critics have pointed out at the time, included sunset clauses that let enrichment limitations lapse after about 10 years, as well as a verification process that was deemed insufficient by US hawks and Israeli security planners.

As Vance put it, the new framework is based on a longer and more verifiable Iran commitment the one that would be part of the Trump-era. The U.S. stance was zero enrichment, but Axios has reported that Washington is mulling a 20-year time limit, whereas Iran has offered five. But the Iran Talks continue to be hindered by Iran's Atomic Energy Organization's rejection of permanent limits on enrichment, as the House of Commons Library research brief on the talks states.

Iran's demands in exchange are equally well known: sanctions relief, and access to some $24 billion in frozen assets. Trump has made it clear that no sanctions will be lifted until a “full” deal is reached. The difference between the acceptable terms for verification that Iran has sought and the acceptable constraint that U.S. has described is where negotiations have repeatedly hit a wall.

Typical of Vance, he stated the U.S. point of view simply: “Do the president's business, then test in the long run.” But he said, "Everybody's always trying to play everybody" when queried about Iranian intentions. He responded with a realism, not reassurance and not the kind that has been used much in American diplomatic rhetoric over Iran for 20 years.

What Israel Wants, and Why that Matters Less Than it Used To

Israel's fear of a deal with Iran is not just about nuclear arms. It's about the regional order as a whole. Netanyahu has outlined his war goals as more than just curbing Iran's nuclear efforts; they involve weakening or destroying the Tehran regime or systematically degrading its proxy network, Hezbollah in Lebanon being the first priority. Such an agreement even one without nuclear does not suit those aims.

Any deal that lets Iran off the sanctions hook is, from Israel's point of view, an agreement to re-finance a government which for years has financed Hezbollah, Hamas, and other armed groups. The economic argument is not insignificant: Iran is capable of exporting around 2.5 to 3 million bpd of oil when it is fully restored under sanctions relief. At current prices, that's annual revenue of $60-$80 billion, which is far more than the $24 billion in frozen assets and alters the fiscal equation for Iranian foreign policy.

Washington, however, has a different equation in mind. The cost of the Strait of Hormuz disruption to the global economy was in the hundreds of billions in trade disruption, energy inflation, and shipping premium surcharges. Energy and food prices rose sharply on the American consumer. The Feds had to jump back into a hawkish stance just as the economy began to stabilize. The domestic political price of continuing conflict in the Middle East is real and rising for an administration that operated on the basis of economic stewardship.

The Global Audience

Outside of Washington and Jerusalem, the rest of the world is watching this break with a combination of anxiety and hope. The Gulf states (Saudi Arabia, the UAE, Bahrain, Kuwait) have quietly embraced the idea of a deal that would reopen the Hormuz strait and normalize Iranian behaviour, although they have been wary of any deal that gives Tehran too much economic room for manoeuvre in the region. The Arab Gulf is not a bloc; as the UK Parliament's research service pointed out, the key Gulf states, in particular, have been following different agendas on Yemen, Sudan, Israel and on the oil production strategy during this crisis.

China and Russia have both maintained economic ties with Iran while sanctions have been in place so they will gain commercial advantages from any economic normalization of trading with Iran. Beijing, which imports about 10 percent of its crude through the Persian Gulf corridor, has a great interest in the Strait's stability whatever the political structure is around the Strait.

European capitals, watching their own energy bills rise through the end of March into April, have generally been supportive of the diplomatic path, albeit privately concerned that any pact that is not solidly backed by multilateral verification will eventually fall apart like the 2015 pact did.

The Larger Reckoning

There's a version of this moment which historians may later label as a turning point, the week Washington officially informed Jerusalem that American strategic interests and Israeli strategic interests, while closely intertwined, are not the same. Technically that's always the case. What had changed is the “willingness to say it out loud, on camera to a national television audience.”

Vance put a positive spin on it. He said a deal that prevents Iran from becoming a nuclear power is better for all Israel included than continued military escalation with no end in sight. There's no irrational reasoning behind it. But the "alternative scenario" of US-Israel strikes that have weakened but not ended Iran's nuclear program and Iran's growing motivation and know-how to restart it does not appear to be obviously better than a credible commitment, backed by teeth.

The question is, whether the inspection regime under discussion can provide the verification that would make such a commitment credible. Iran's history of transparency with the IAEA dating back to the discovery in 2002 that it had been operating a secret enrichment program for nearly 20 years is not conducive to trusting easy. Vance admits all of those at the table are seeking to play all the other players at the table.

Probably it would be better to take Trump's optimism that a deal could be done in two or three days as a president's talking point rather than a hard intelligence estimate. The parties are truly divided structurally. The espionage issue further complicates already strained trust issues. But Israel's ongoing military operations in Lebanon (fresh strikes were reported just this morning near Tyre) indicate that the ceasefire is fragile.

But there's a direction of travel. Washington has determined that this war, coupled with a verifiable nuclear deal with Iran and the restoration of stability to the Strait of Hormuz, is in the U.S. national interest. What Israel agrees or not is, as JD Vance said, a secondary question. It's a sentence that would've seemed nearly unimaginable from an American official 10 years ago. It was said in a forthright manner today, and the world knew.