Secretary of State Marco Rubio has quietly stepped away from the most consequential diplomatic gamble of the Trump second term, ceding the spotlight on Iran nuclear negotiations to Vice President JD Vance, and, if unnamed administration sources are to be believed, waiting to see whether the assignment breaks Vance's 2028 prospects.
The maneuvering, first detailed in reporting citing Axios, paints a picture of two ambitious Republicans navigating a live diplomatic crisis with one eye on Tehran and the other on the next presidential primary. An unnamed U.S. official told Axios bluntly: "He is waiting to see if Vance self-destructs."
Whether Rubio is playing chess or simply exercising prudent skepticism, the result is the same. The vice president, not the secretary of state, is now the public face of a high-wire negotiation with a regime that has been exchanging drone and missile fire with the United States in recent days. If the deal collapses, Vance owns the wreckage. If it succeeds, the credit flows upward to the president.
Traditionally, the secretary of state leads major foreign negotiations. That norm has been broken. Vance, along with special envoys Steve Witkoff and Jared Kushner, urged President Trump to sign a memorandum of understanding with Iran earlier this month. Rubio did not join that push.
The AP reported that Rubio was so skeptical of obtaining an acceptable deal that he declined to head the U.S. delegation to the first ceasefire negotiations in Islamabad, Pakistan, back in April. Vance, by contrast, asked Trump twice to let him take the lead before the president agreed.
Retired diplomat Ian Kelly described the assignment in unflattering terms:
"It's rather unusual for the VP to be given the lead role in a negotiation, but it's quite possible that Rubio is happy to let him. It's a pig in a poke. It's a loser job."
That assessment may prove harsh, or prescient. The 60-day MOU signed between the U.S. and Iran was designed to pause hostilities and create a window for a final deal covering Iran's nuclear program, access to the Strait of Hormuz, and an end to fighting. But the window is already under pressure.
Iran announced it would close the Strait of Hormuz after renewed Hezbollah-Israel fighting threatened to scuttle the talks. Tehran views a Lebanon ceasefire as a red line. Meanwhile, an Iranian strike hit an oil tanker at the ship-to-ship transfer zone at Khor al-Zubair port near Basra, Iraq, on March 11. The fragile ceasefire looks increasingly fragile.
Vance traveled to Switzerland to lead direct talks with Iranian officials, joining Witkoff and Kushner who were already engaged in negotiations. The vice president has argued that a deal would stabilize oil markets by reopening the Strait of Hormuz and lower gas prices ahead of the midterm elections, a politically potent case.
Earlier this year, Vance warned against going to war with Iran, arguing that closure of the Strait could trigger an oil crisis. He has cultivated what allies describe as a populist, non-interventionist brand. A top Trump adviser characterized the split this way: Rubio represents "a more pro-Israel" stance, while Vance plays the "Israel-skeptic."
That framing drew pushback inside the administration. A senior official insisted the divide is not so clean: "It's not that one has the pro-Israel bucket and the other has the anti-Israel bucket. It's not how it works internally." Another adviser offered a gentler metaphor: "Don't think of them as two sides of the same coin. They're more like the different tools on a Swiss Army knife."
White House spokeswoman Anna Kelly dismissed talk of a feud outright:
"There is one camp, President Trump's camp, and the entire administration is fully behind the president's efforts to ensure Iran can never possess a nuclear weapon."
The denials are predictable. The dynamics are harder to deny. Vance's growing isolation inside the West Wing has been a recurring theme, and the Iran assignment only sharpens the question of whether the vice president is being empowered or exposed.
President Trump has done little to quiet the speculation. At the G7 summit, he joked publicly about the stakes Vance faces. Newsmax reported his remark:
"If it works out, I'm going to take the credit. If it doesn't work out, I'm blaming JD!"
A White House insider described the arrangement as Trump "conducting a tryout in real time," suggesting Vance's role is as much a political test as a diplomatic one. Conservative commentator Ben Shapiro offered a sharper verdict on Fox News: "In my opinion, the vice president, the chief negotiator on this project, has not well served the president."
Trump has also publicly floated the idea that Vance and Rubio should run together in 2028, while refusing to say who should be at the top of the ticket. He frequently presses close advisers and donors for their read on both men. The president appears to enjoy the creative tension, or at least sees no reason to resolve it.
Rubio has not been idle. He testified before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee and laid out strict U.S. conditions for any nuclear deal, drawing a hard line between the Trump approach and the Obama-era JCPOA. As the New York Post reported, Rubio told senators that any agreement must address Iran's enrichment infrastructure and its stockpile of nearly 1,000 pounds of uranium enriched to 60% purity.
He confirmed that Iran's Supreme Leader Khamenei is "increasingly" engaging in negotiations but only through written communications and intermediaries, with his location unknown since being injured in U.S.-Israeli attacks. Rubio also made clear the U.S. will not lift sanctions in exchange for reopening the Strait of Hormuz, though Washington would agree to lift its blockade of Iranian ports, a measure costing Tehran "hundreds of millions of dollars a day."
His framing was deliberate and hawkish:
"It is not JCPOA. [That deal] would have expired this year, and it allowed them to keep all the enrichment equipment that they needed."
Rubio also acknowledged the risk of failure without flinching: "If it doesn't work out, then obviously we still have a problem with respect to their nuclear ambitions, but what they won't have is the conventional shield to hide behind any longer."
That is the posture of a man who has already priced in the possibility that talks collapse, and positioned himself to say he warned everyone. Prediction markets have noticed, with Rubio surging toward Vance in 2028 GOP nominee odds.
The uncomfortable truth is that the Iran negotiations now carry a double payload. On one track, the United States is trying to prevent a nuclear-armed Iran, stabilize the Middle East, and keep oil flowing through the Strait of Hormuz. On the other, two of the Republican Party's most prominent figures are staking out positions that will define the next presidential primary.
Vance is cast as the "natural heir apparent" by many in the GOP, the populist who wants to prove he can close a deal. Rubio is described as positioning himself to unite "the party's old-guard establishment with Trump's base", the traditional hawk who kept his fingerprints off a deal he never believed in.
Former assistant secretary of state Dan Fried told the AP: "The talk about differences is not idle speculation. There is definitely something to it."
The administration's internal dynamics on Iran have been shifting for weeks, with Rubio's influence reportedly growing even as Vance holds the negotiating brief. Whether that amounts to a coordinated strategy or a slow-motion divergence depends on whom you ask, and whether you believe the on-the-record denials or the off-the-record candor.
Several critical questions hang over the entire enterprise. The specific terms of the U.S.-Iran memorandum of understanding have not been made public. The status of the fragile ceasefire remains unclear, with drone and missile exchanges threatening to collapse it. Iran's demand for a Lebanon ceasefire as a precondition adds another variable the U.S. does not fully control.
And the most politically charged question of all: Did Rubio actively engineer Vance's exposure, or did Vance walk into a high-risk assignment with eyes open, believing he could deliver? The unnamed official's claim, "He is waiting to see if Vance self-destructs", is attributed to a single source and has not been confirmed by Rubio or anyone speaking on his behalf.
What is confirmed is the result. The vice president is negotiating in Switzerland. The secretary of state is testifying on Capitol Hill, setting conditions, and keeping his distance. One man is in the arena. The other is watching from a very comfortable seat.
In Washington, the safest place to stand is usually right behind the person taking the risk. Rubio, whatever his motives, appears to know that as well as anyone.