Vance says U.S. is not conducting aggressive operations in Iran
The Vice President expects the war to end after the midterm elections, even as incidents at sea and in the air continue.
Published
Vice President JD Vance said the United States is not conducting aggressive operations in Iran, even as Iran continues to occasionally fire on commercial shipping. He told the New York Post he expects the war to end after the midterm elections, entering what he called a "much different phase."
The claim of restraint sits alongside a run of recent incidents. The US military attacked Iranian boats that tried to seize a Navy drone. Iran's Revolutionary Guard has claimed a fourth drone shootdown in four days near the Strait of Hormuz, a claim Iranian state media reported and the US military has not confirmed. Military chiefs from the United States, Israel and Arab nations held a secret meeting on Iran, according to an unnamed report.
The administration has also kept up financial and diplomatic pressure. Treasury Secretary Bessent has said the US is now ending the Iran threat rather than managing it. He has said Trump and Xi will continue talks touching Iran at a summit this month, that he will meet with China's He Lifeng this weekend as part of related talks, and that the UAE has made forward-facing statements about cutting financial ties with Iran. The Congressional Budget Office has put the five-month cost of the war at $38 billion and raised its inflation forecast for early 2027 by half a point.
Vance's framing of de-escalation and a post-midterm "different phase" contrasts with the pace of military activity on the ground: drone shootdowns, pipeline attacks, tanker incidents and Treasury efforts to isolate Iranian finances all continue. The gap between the rhetoric and the record suggests political positioning rather than a change in operational reality, leaving the risk to markets largely where it was before the vice president spoke.