By Adam Cancryn, CNN
(CNN) — When President Donald Trump first raised the prospect of war with Iran, some of the most serious reservations came from his second in command.
A former Marine who rose to political prominence as a critic of foreign wars, Vice President JD Vance counseled against the perils of launching another unpredictable conflict in the Middle East.
But as it became apparent that Trump still favored military action, Vance shifted his stance. He advocated for Trump to attack quickly and decisively, arguing it would be necessary to minimize American casualties and prevent Iran from striking first.
The vice president’s pivot, described by two people familiar with the events, reflected how Trump’s closest aides approached a war that few initially viewed as an imperative — but all of them ended up supporting.
As Trump weighed conflict, many of the loudest pro-war voices came from allies outside the White House rather than those in his inner circle, according to a half-dozen aides, advisers and others familiar with the matter. Those more vocal actors eventually drowned out quieter calls for caution.
In addition to Vance, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Gen. Dan Caine laid out the potential negative repercussions of striking Iran. Secretary of State Marco Rubio, already occupied with managing the aftermath of January’s raid on Venezuela, offered only tepid support at the outset. And chief of staff Susie Wiles had spent recent months more focused on political matters, plotting a midterm push focused on domestic priorities she worried had been overshadowed by Trump’s foreign policy forays.
Despite the misgivings, Vance and other top officials put up little resistance to war once they came to see it as inevitable, spending the run-up to the February 28 attack racing to execute Trump’s wishes rather than trying to change them.
“This is not a ‘team of rivals’ White House; the president is not having different policy minds tear out each other’s throats in open debate,” said Curt Mills, executive director of The American Conservative and among those deeply skeptical of foreign intervention. “If the president was unwilling or unable to say no, we were going to war.”
Those senior aides are now scrambling to build out a longer-term strategy for a fight with no clear endgame but plenty of risk to Trump’s presidency and — for some — their own future political aspirations.
Vance’s support for the war has alarmed the anti-interventionist wing of the GOP that he spent years cultivating, effectively gambling his 2028 fortunes on being able to pull off a fast win in the Middle East with few American deaths and no lasting consequences.
For Rubio, who is widely viewed as Vance’s chief rival for the 2028 nomination, a prolonged conflict threatens to jeopardize the goodwill he’s accumulated from overseeing a string of successful gambits abroad. He seemed to step in it just days into the war, prompting swift backlash when he suggested Israel led the US into striking Iran. He walked back those comments the next day, after Trump publicly disagreed.
“This is the precarious nature of this decision in particular,” said one former Trump administration official. “It could end up haunting the folks who have ambitions and want to see beyond this particular administration.”
The president’s team is juggling pressing challenges on several fronts, even as Trump has spent recent days touti