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Mike Pence Says His “Prayers” Are With JD Vance, Deal Falls “Far Short”

by in Daily Edition | June 23, 2026 4 min read

Mike Pence

VP Mike Pence, Gage Skidmore, CC BY-SA 2.0, via Wikimedia Commons

While President Trump’s Vice President JD Vance was in Switzerland negotiating with Iran via Qatari and Pakistani mediators, Trump’s former VP Mike Pence shared his opinions on the Iran situation this week in a Wall Street Journal op-ed (‘Victory Over Iran Is Still Possible’) and in an interview on Breitbart.

On Breitbart, Pence said: “Our prayers are with the Vice President, but I just don’t trust the Iranians.”

He continued: “I mean, my years in the Situation Room, my years on the Foreign Affairs Committee, when we served in the Congress together, has taught me. That old saying that says ‘trust but verify’ ought to be turned around. It ought to be with the Iranians: verify and never trust. And I really do believe that this Memorandum of Understanding falls far short of what the United States of America should be demanding in this moment, after the brilliant efforts of our military.”

Taking aim at Democrats even as he criticized the Trump administration, Pence concluded that the current Iran status “smacks of the kind of appeasement that Barack Obama and Joe Biden attempted with the Iranians, only to see them gain strength and gain power and continue to sow violence across the region.”

[NOTE: Pence was Trump’s VP during his first term, when the administration withdrew the U.S. from the JCPOA negotiated during the Obama presidency, an agreement that mandated verification of Iranian nuclear compliance.]

Pence added, “So to me it’s about what’s in it, it’s about what’s not in it, but my hope is as negotiations go on forward that our negotiators — and with the President standing firm — that we’re going to end up with a deal that really serves the long-term security interests of America, Israel, and the region.”

Fox News star Laura Ingraham called Pence’s take on the situation “ludicrous,” crediting Trump with understanding the “reality of the facts on the ground” pertaining to the Iranian situation, including “how much runway the American people are giving him on this conflict.”

[NOTE: The Iran war was unpopular from the start according to polls, which nevertheless showed 78% of Republicans approving of Trump’s attacks, largely on the premise that the war would end Iran’s nuclear ambitions. The current ceasefire and MOU — with critics asserting that the U.S. has emboldened Iran, even lifting long-standing economic sanctions — have swelled dissatisfaction even among some Republican loyalists, with Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX) saying “history teaches that giving billions of dollars to theocratic lunatics who want to murder us is a bad idea.”] 

Yet Ingraham still praised Trump and pilloried Pence, saying in an on-air monologue: “Does Pence really believe what Hegseth, Rubio, and General Caine are saying—that they had a plan to easily overthrow the Iranian government and install a pro-American government, and they presented it to Trump, and Trump said, ‘No, I don’t want to do that’? That’s just ludicrous. Even war hawk Lindsey Graham doesn’t think that. The truth is—and yes, I know this—Trump has been briefed on all the options. And the one thing we know about Trump is that he does not stop until he gets the best deal possible.”