Former White House Press Secretary Ari Fleischer has a bone to pick with Vice President JD Vance, and it's not about whether the Iran war was a good idea. It's about how it ended.
Fleischer, who served under former President George W. Bush, took to X on Wednesday to share Vance's post and offer a sharply different read on the conflict. His verdict: the fighting wasn't the mistake. The ceasefire was.
“The problem was not the Iran War. It was the cease fire,” Fleischer wrote.
He didn't stop there. “Once the decision was made, we should not have stopped until the regime fell. But instead, you negotiated a cease fire that didn’t last, didn’t work and left us in no man’s land, with higher prices and our troops still deployed.”
The Case for Finishing the Job
Fleischer's argument is essentially the classic “if you're going to do it, do it all the way” critique. He said the U.S. should have dismantled additional layers of Iran's leadership and backed pro-Western forces capable of taking power. A more decisive outcome, he argued, could have reopened the Strait of Hormuz, restored oil flows and spared the region a long stretch of uncertainty.
“If you start a war, you need to win it and finish it – otherwise don’t start it,” he said.
In Fleischer's telling, the ceasefire delivered none of that. It left American troops deployed, the Navy committed to the region and energy prices elevated. He also defended Trump's decision to enter the conflict in the first place, noting the president wasn't compelled to intervene in either June 2025 or February 2026.
Vance Points the Finger at the War
Fleischer's remarks came after Vance attributed the Republican Party's midterm losses partly to the Iran conflict and rising living costs.
“The reason we lost is the war. The president himself said so last night,” Vance wrote on X.
He called for Republicans to prioritize ending the war, tackling inflation, returning to an America First agenda and changing the country's relationship with Israel.
Rep. Thomas Massie (R-Ky.) welcomed Vance's comments, saying, “Better late than never.”
Investor Peter Schiff warned that the administration's debt and inflation policies could further damage Republican prospects, potentially costing the party the White House in 2028.
Disclaimer: This content was partially produced with the help of AI tools and was reviewed and published by MarketDash editors.
