His comments, made on Tim Dillon’s podcast, which was released over the weekend, revealed a possible crack in the prevailing narrative that a second Trump administration would be a greater ally to Israel than either the current administration or a Harris administration.

“Israel has the right to defend itself, but America’s interest is sometimes going to be distinct. Sometimes, we’re going to have overlapping interests, and sometimes, we’re going to have distinct interests. And our interest, I think, very much is in not going to war with Iran,” he said.

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The Ohio senator is known in the upper chamber for his isolationist stance on foreign policy.

“There is never perfect overlap between the interests of any two countries, but there is an extraordinary overlap between the interests of the U.S. and Israel in the Middle East,” Bradley Bowman, a senior director at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies, told the Washington Examiner. “All of Israel’s enemies there are America’s enemies, and we have no more motivated or capable ally than Israel in going after that subset of U.S. adversaries. Israel’s actions this weekend made that clear.”

Vance’s view that a direct conflict between Israel and Iran would not be in the United States’s interest is in line with the Biden administration’s perspective. While the administration has largely supported Israel during the war with Hamas, there has been underlying tension between the two allies, particularly over the humanitarian situation in Gaza. It culminated in the administration withholding a weapons shipment earlier this year.

Both President Joe Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris have called on Israel to do more to protect Palestinian civilians, while the Trump campaign has not made those same calls. Harris, in particular, has frequently raised the plight of Palestinians whose lives have been devastated by a war they didn’t start, though she has indicated her possible future administration would likely be close to a continuation of Biden’s positions.

The more progressive wing of the Democratic Party has called for the administration to issue an arms embargo on Israel and for Harris to do so as a part of her campaign.

Trump is viewed as more closely aligned with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu than Harris, and they have worked together during the former president’s first term. In his administration, the U.S. recognized Jerusalem as the capital, affirmed Israel’s sovereignty over the Golan Heights, and brokered the Abraham Accords, which were peace plans with multiple Gulf countries and Israel for normalization.

Yet, Trump has also said Jewish Americans could cost him the election and questioned why the majority of them continue to support the Democratic Party, as they have for several decades.

Both the Trump and Harris campaigns are desperate to win over Muslim and Jewish Americans, who could play a decisive role in next week’s presidential election. Many progressives and Muslim Americans have shared their support for Green Party candidate Jill Stein, who could win enough votes from Harris to tip the election in the former president’s favor.

There is a large Muslim population in Michigan who have expressed their dissatisfaction with Harris over the Biden administration’s continued support for Israel.

Biden administration officials, including the president, communicated with their Israeli counterparts about the waves of airstrikes the country carried out this weekend against military targets in Iran in retaliation for an attack Tehran carried out earlier this month.

The U.S. military deployed U.S. forces and an advanced air defense system to Israel ahead of its attack against Iran in case it incurred another retaliation attack. In two separate Iranian attacks, it fired hundreds of missiles and rockets at Israel in April and again in early October. The Biden administration had urged Israel to calibrate its attack to ensure it was not too provocative as to incur another attack.

“The President and his national security team, of course, worked with the Israelis over recent weeks to encourage Israel to conduct a response that was targeted and proportional with low risk of civilian harm, and that appears to have been precisely what transpired this evening,” a senior Biden administration official said, adding that the president “encouraged the Prime Minister to design a response that served to deter further attacks against Israel while reducing risk of further escalation.”

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It’s unclear if Iran will respond militarily to the strikes, which could lead to the direct conflict that both sides seemingly want to avoid. Israel could have launched a more dramatic attack, such as targeting Iran’s oil and energy infrastructure, though it’s believed it would have increased the likelihood of a retaliatory Iranian attack, while Iranian officials downplayed the damage it caused.

Israel targeted Tehran’s air defense systems, protecting important targets, and in doing so, made the high-value targets it was meant to protect more vulnerable should it pursue a future attack.

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Israel’s ground campaign in Gaza has decimated Hamas’s senior leaders and the ranks and the strip itself. The overwhelming majority of Palestinians in Gaza have been displaced, some several times, while there are significant shortages of desperately needed humanitarian aid.

“Helping Israel deter, degrade, and defeat terrorist organizations such as Hamas and Hezbollah, who have attacked and killed hundreds of U.S. citizens and servicemembers, strengthens U.S. national security,” Bowman added. “Indeed, on July 30, 2024, Israel killed Fuad Shukr, a top Hezbollah commander whom the United States government says played a ‘key role’ in the 1983 Beirut Marine barracks bombing that resulted in the deaths of 241 U.S. military personnel. Washington didn’t bring justice to that terrorist. Israel did. We shouldn’t take such a friend for granted, especially when that friend is being attacked from seven fronts by countries and terrorists that hate America just as much as they hate Israel.”