What JD Vance Knew About the War, and New Warnings About A.I.
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From The New York Times, it's The Headlines. I'm Tracy Mumford. Today's Friday, September 11th. Here's what we're covering. Over the past six months.
As the president of the United States says, we have the cards. We have the military advantage. We now have additional economic pressure that we're applying on them through the blockade.
Vice President J.D. Vance has been one of President Trump's key messengers about the war in Iran.
I think that they're losing their capabilities by the day. I think they're realizing, by the way, that their control over the Strait of Hormuz is effectively gone.
He has publicly echoed Trump's confident tone about the American military campaign.
We are not going to have a deal that allows the Iranians to have a nuclear weapon. So as the president just told me, we're locked and loaded.
Now, my colleagues in The Times' Washington bureau have learned how, behind the scenes, Vance has gone out of his way to get his own updates about the war directly from U.S. military commanders, and how that information has sometimes been vastly different from what the administration presented to the public. According to interviews with more than half a dozen current and former administration officials, Vance, who opposed the war from the outset, has taken the unusual step of personally contacting commanders in the field before their views are consolidated by the Pentagon. Over the course of the spring and summer, Vance reached out to officers in the Middle East, Europe, and Asia, asking them about everything from battlefield tactics to casualty estimates to how they assessed Iran's resilience.
He also asked for a detailed accounting of what weapons remained in U.S. stockpiles, and how any shortages could affect the U.S.' 's ability to deter China, Russia, and North Korea. The commanders gave him a blunt, sobering assessment, saying their stocks of critical munitions, like interceptor missiles, were the lowest they'd ever seen. According to people who spoke to Vance, the vice president came away from some of his conversations with deep concerns about the overall strategy in the war. The commanders made clear to him that the U.S. had limited ability to block Iranian strikes and deal with threats elsewhere in the world, and that the Iranian government was prepared to endure huge amounts of pain to fight for its survival.
The officials the Times talked to said Vance communicated those concerns in his private talks with President Trump, though they could not say whether that factored into the administration's decision to scale back its bombing campaign earlier this year. In response to questions from The Times about how Vance has gathered information on the war, a Pentagon spokesman confirmed that the vice president and other White House officials had been connected directly with commanders, quote, to ensure the president's team receives all available data points. Meanwhile, in the Middle East, an Iranian-backed militia made a major battlefield advance yesterday that could snarl global oil shipping even more. According to officials in Yemen, the Houthis there seized control of a strategic port city on the Red Sea, fighting off government forces backed by Saudi Arabia.
With the Strait of Hormuz largely closed for months, the Red Sea has become a crucial alternative route for tankers and other ships. But the Houthis have been partially blockading it, firing on Saudi vessels. And this new victory puts an Iranian ally one step closer to controlling another critical maritime chokepoint.
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