Amit Segal@AmitSegal
There is apparently a “very discreet, extremely well-funded campaign” to derail negotiations between the U.S. and Iran, according to Vice President JD Vance on Joe Rogan’s show last night. Why is the Vice President perpetuating this dubious claim? The reason is simple: it benefits him too.
Much like other theories that find a home on Rogan’s podcast, this one is thinly sourced and vastly misinterpreted. The article Vance cites for this conspiracy does indeed point to an Israeli-funded influence operation—a FARA-registered, Israeli-government-funded campaign, run through political consultant Brad Parscale’s Clock Tower X, pushing pro-Israel content into the MAGA ecosystem, including through paid influencers who reportedly received suggested language via private group chats and compensation tied to engagement.
Where the article cuts against him is on the one point his whole story depends on: that this was a deliberate campaign built “to derail the negotiations” and keep the war going indefinitely. The Time magazine reporting establishes no such intent. Per the article, the contracted goal was preventing young conservatives from turning against Israel—a reputation campaign, not an anti-ceasefire operation. The sabotage motive is Vance’s attribution, not the reporting’s finding.
And the two people best positioned to know deny his version. Parscale flatly says he never worked to undermine Trump, the memorandum of understanding, or the ceasefire, and calls the “prolong the war” charge false—the invention of anonymous officials who needed a bogeyman. The Israeli side, far from running a war-prolonging operation, is furious the expensive campaign failed—”we are pissed at Brad Parscale… things have only gotten worse”—with Pew Research Center polling showing Israel’s favorability at a decade’s low. Perhaps they shouldn’t be so negative; apparently the failed Hasbara campaign was not a waste of money, after all, a senior source has alleged it destroyed the memorandum of understanding.
On the other hand, one would think an operation potent enough to derail a superpower’s negotiations could, at minimum, impose a cost on the man denouncing it. It couldn’t. Vance named it, on the biggest podcast in the country, and likely walked away stronger for it.
More revealing than the theory itself was Vance’s posture toward the supposed psychological operation.
“[Israel is] a country of 9 million people. We have 330 million people. And so, of course, they’re going to try to persuade Americans,” Vance told Rogan. Israel’s efforts to sway American foreign policy are not themselves suspect—”a lot of other countries do [it],” he said—the danger, in his telling, is that American officials “will act in ways that do not serve the American public” as a result.
Vance folded Israel in with Qatar and Russia. “It doesn’t bother me that Qatar tries to influence the United States…. I like a lot of the Qataris, just like I like a lot of the Israelis…. It frankly doesn’t even bother me that Russia or some of these other countries do it. It’s just the nature of being a political leader in 2026,” he said.
Israel might reasonably object to the company. The “it doesn’t bother me” is not magnanimous tolerance but a demotion. Bundle Israel with a Hamas sponsor and an adversary state under one shrug, and Israel is no longer a friend or ally that recently fought beside the U.S. wing to wing but simply the more agnostic and malicious-sounding “foreign interest.”
Note, too, where he relocates the guilt. In another indictment disguised as an absolution, Vance doesn’t blame Israel; his anger lands on “American officials” who “act in ways that do not serve the American public.” It echoes the statement that sent Jewish groups into a frenzy, when, asked whether Israel controls the government, he assured a young Republican only that it does not control “this administration.” In short: the conspiracy exists—he is simply not part of it, though one suspects he’ll be able to name who is when the time is right.
It is the same dance he performs on the “divergent interests” between Israel and the U.S. He never names them, because naming them would force him to describe the divergence. Far easier to gesture at a shadow, assuring believers that it does exist and holding its contents in reserve for a moment when he’ll need to brandish it.
Why romance the conspiracists now?
Because, as the Wall Street Journal put it, Vance has had a “Terrible, Horrible, No Good, Very Bad Week.” His crowning foreign-policy achievement—the ceasefire he negotiated with the Iranian regime—has been going up in fire and smoke for a week. His doctrine of restraint took another blow when President Trump broke with him by signaling greater support for Ukraine. And to cap it off, hedge-fund magnate Ken Griffin, a major Republican donor, said he’d favor Secretary of State Marco Rubio over Vance in a 2028 GOP primary.
He has stumbled on a fantastic escape from having to admit that his signature foreign-policy achievement collapsed because his boss is less predictable than quantum mechanics and the men he sat across from are fanatics: blame Israel. It’s hardly original.
But none of this pays unless there’s a constituency that wants to hear the explanation. By Vance’s own framing, there is a “massive pro-Israel, anti-Israel debate in the United States of America”—and he is the highly electable “reasonable moderate” standing in the middle of it.
Vance professed confusion at being called antisemitic. His defense doubles as the explanation for why he keeps sounding like it: “look at the way young Republicans versus Republicans over the age of sixty-five approach this issue,” he said. “Right now, Israel is losing the public opinion battle in the United States of America. It is a simple and obvious fact. Donald Trump has said that publicly.”
Few genuinely believe he harbors an animus against Jews. His animus is toward power—Israel is simply, at this moment, a convenient face of it. But a friendly suggestion to the vice president: if you’d rather not be called antisemitic, it might help not to claim—against the Department of Justice, the Central Intelligence Agency, the Federal Bureau of Investigation, and the very files you released—that Jeffrey Epstein “clearly had connections to the highest levels of Israeli intelligence.” People can easily get confused.
