The IRGC attacked a Singapore-flagged cargo ship in the Strait of Hormuz yesterday, damaging its bridge but causing no casualties, hours after Iran’s paramilitary navy warned ships not to use routes through the waterway that the regime had not sanctioned. Secretary of State Marco Rubio, asked whether he resented being sidelined in negotiations led by Vice President Vance, dismissed the question as silly while reaffirming in notably different language than Vance that the Iranian leadership are theocratic lunatics, a characterization he said is not a matter of personal belief but simply a statement of fact.
Daniel DePetris, fellow at Defense Priorities and syndicated foreign affairs columnist at the Chicago Tribune and Newsweek, joined Dan Proft on Chicago’s Morning Answer to assess the Rubio-Vance dynamic, the prospects for the sixty-day negotiating window, and whether the settlement could simply be extended indefinitely.
DePetris said the memorandum of understanding signed last week was a reasonable first step in establishing a framework for further negotiations, with its core objectives being to stop the war, reopen the strait, stabilize oil prices, and create space to address the genuinely difficult nuclear questions. He said when he wrote that now comes the hard part, he was referring specifically to the nuclear file, where both Iran and the Trump administration have adopted maximalist positions that one or both will need to soften for any agreement to materialize. If neither side budges, a return to the shooting war remains a real possibility.
On the Rubio-Vance dynamic, DePetris said the two men represent fundamentally different foreign policy philosophies operating within the same administration, and their rhetorical divergence reflects a genuine substantive divide rather than a messaging inconsistency. He described Vance as something closer to a quasi-realist who believes in using hard power only when absolutely necessary and otherwise favoring normalization of relations through engagement and trade. Rubio, by contrast, is a traditional hawkish Republican in the Ronald Reagan mold who believes leverage and sticks rather than carrots are what produce results with adversaries like Iran. DePetris noted the additional layer that both men are plausible 2028 presidential candidates, which creates its own incentive structure around how closely each wants to be identified with the outcome of these negotiations.
He said there were credible public reports that Vance did not believe the war was wise to begin with, which makes it interesting that Trump chose him to lead diplomacy in a conflict he apparently opposed. Rubio appears to have held the opposite position, believing military force was necessary to compel Iran to negotiate seriously. The result is a situation where the administration’s lead negotiator has a philosophical orientation toward accommodation while the Secretary of State, nominally the country’s chief diplomat, believes the adversary only responds to pressure.
On the interesting development of Senator Bill Cassidy changing his vote on the war powers resolution after a briefing from Steve Witkoff, DePetris said it is worth watching whether the plan Cassidy described as plausible for achieving three of the four original objectives, degrading nuclear capability, ballistic missile capacity, and conventional warfare capability, with regime change acknowledged as off the table, is actually implemented. He said the administration’s public rationale for the war was, in his characterization, schizophrenic during the first two to three weeks but has improved considerably since. He said he wants to see action rather than statements.
On Pakistan’s role as the primary intermediary, DePetris said the Pakistanis appear to be driving the train and doing a competent job of keeping both parties at the table. He said Trump has a personal relationship with Pakistani leadership including Field Marshal Asim Munir and President Shehbaz Sharif, and Iran appears comfortable with Pakistan’s facilitating role. At this stage, keeping everyone at the table is really all that can be asked of the intermediary.
On whether the sixty-day window will actually produce results or simply be extended, DePetris offered what may be the most realistic assessment: he does not believe Trump wants to return to war, and he believes the interests of both parties converge around extension rather than confrontation. Iran’s interest is to keep exporting oil and collecting revenue. Trump’s interest is to point to the cessation of hostilities and declining oil prices heading into the midterm elections. That convergence could easily produce a rolling extension of the current framework, with deadlines treated as suggestions rather than hard limits, exactly as happened during the Obama-era negotiations that preceded the JCPOA, which went through three or four deadline extensions before reaching a final agreement. He said the settlement could become a new status quo in which Iran keeps exporting oil, the United States keeps claiming negotiations are proceeding satisfactorily, and the underlying nuclear questions remain unresolved but politically manageable for both sides through November and potentially beyond.