Vice President JD Vance has been tasked with a last-ditch attempt to stop the resumption of all-out war with Iran. He has offered to renew negotiations in a letter to Mohsen Rezaei, the head of Iran’s Supreme National Security Council, whom US intelligence appears to have identified as a person the US can do business with.
It’s a tough mission as Rezaei is a known hardliner who formerly led Iran’s Revolutionary Guard Corps. Nor does the US President seem particularly invested in peace. “We may do another little Epic Fury,” Donald Trump teased at a midterm election rally in Florida.
Gulf states have been warned to prepare for a fast and furious short burst of war after the midterms are over next week. The US has been replenishing its depleted missile stocks and quietly scaling back the presence of military and diplomatic personnel in the region in anticipation of Iranian retaliation.
However, Trump has allowed Vance the chance to burnish his humanitarian credentials with his peace overture. The Iranians “need help with medical supplies and warm things”, Trump conceded in response to questions from reporters. “He asked me what I thought. I said, ‘If you want to do that, that’s ok. Basically, it’s getting supplies in to help people that are not well.”
The fate of the Middle East rests on this slender note of empathy. The Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu is eager to resume bombing Iran. Trump claims to be gung-ho about finishing the botched job they started, but has no good new military options.
Thus, it suits Trump to claim that Vance’s outreach is largely altruistic in motive. And if the move helps his Vice President burnish his 2028 presidential prospects as a peacemaker, Trump’s not too bothered. He regards Vance as his vassal, not as competition.
There is no sign of a peace deal for Ukraine either. You have to wonder if Trump delivered the same breezy, “If you want to do that, that’s ok” message to his wife Melania. This week, a temporary humanitarian ceasefire in Russian-occupied Oleshky in southern Ukraine is underway thanks to a deal brokered by the First Lady.
“Without my intervention, the possibility to bring humanitarian aid into the city and to evacuate the elderly would be impossible,” Melania claimed rather grandly in a statement from the Office of the First Lady on 23 October.
The relief of the beleaguered, starving citizens of Oleshky unfolded this weekend. Only one, pro-Trump US media organisation, Newsmax, was invited to witness the operation. Ukrainians fear it could deliver a propaganda victory to Vladimir Putin, as Russia controls all the entrances and exits in the city.
For now, however, as far as helping civilians is concerned, it’s an advantage Melania has over Vance and Trump. According to Kalshi prediction markets, the chance of the First Lady winning the Nobel Peace Prize in 2027 soared to 4 per cent when the ceasefire was announced. She has since slipped back to 1.3 per cent but it’s a respectable number, just 0.2 points shy of Pope Leo XIV’s tally.
The Pope petitioned Putin for help for Oleshky from the hospital bed in Rome where he was recovering from lung cancer surgery in mid-October, but we can safely assume the pontiff is not going to engage in an unseemly arm-wrestle with Melania for the credit.
This is not the first time Melania has engaged in humanitarian efforts. She opened a channel with the Kremlin at the time of the 2025 Alaska summit for the release of Ukrainian children seized in Russian-occupied territory and taken to Russia. Since then, roughly 30 kidnapped children have been reunited with their families.
These are small victories in the scale of things, but far more meaningful than anything Vance has achieved. The memorandum of agreement he negotiated with Iran barely lasted long enough for the ink to dry on the paper Trump signed last June before hostilities resumed.
On Thursday, Trump was briefed in person at the White House on military options against Iran by Admiral Brad Cooper, the top US middle east commander, as well as Secretary for War Pete Hegseth and Joint Chiefs chairman General Dan Caine, according to a report in the Wall Street Journal.
If the US military has found a new break-through solution that hasn’t already been identified, this will come as a surprise. As recently as August, Trump put Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent in charge of “Operation Economic Outcast”, designed to squeeze Iran economically after the failure of the US bombing campaign.
Bessent claimed Iran was collapsing and would soon be “crying uncle”. What happened to that prediction? As former president Barack Obama joked recently, the Treasury secretary, who has a net worth of over $500m, was last seen outside a Cheesecake Factory pretending to be anti-elitist on the midterm campaign stump.
Among this pack of clowns, Melania can justifiably boast that at least she saved lives, reunited families and made a difference.