Trump Left JD Vance Out of Key Iran Meeting—but Invited Jared Kushner

As President Donald Trump drags the U.S. deeper into a war with Iran that has caused horrific civilian casualties and decimated the global oil market, it’s worth looking back at how the country got here.

New reporting from The New York Times on Tuesday provided key insight into what convinced Trump to go to war.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu personally attended a meeting at the White House on February 11, the Times reported, along with most top members of Trump’s Cabinet. The head of Israel’s foreign intelligence agency, David Barnea, attended virtually.

Also present was the president’s son-in-law Jared Kushner, the slimy businessman who has been a key negotiator in the Middle East since Trump’s reelection, despite not holding an official staff position in the White House.

Conspicuously absent was JD Vance, who was in Azerbaijan for a diplomatic visit. The Times reported that the meeting “had been scheduled on such short notice that he was unable to make it back in time.” But it’s interesting that the most supposedly antiwar figure inside Trump’s Cabinet wasn’t invited to the meeting that convinced the president to kickstart the conflict.

Netanyahu gave an hour-long presentation arguing that Iran’s missile program was weak and could be toppled by U.S. munitions, leading to an easy victory in the region, according to the Times. From there, the prime minister said, a new government could be installed by the U.S. and Israel.

Netanyahu’s speech reportedly worked in convincing the president that war was desirable—and Trump’s underlings, while they would raise a few objections in the coming weeks, fell in line.

“Even the more skeptical members of Mr. Trump’s war cabinet—with the stark exception of Mr. Vance, the figure inside the White House most opposed to a full-scale war—deferred to the president’s instincts, including his abundant confidence that the war would be quick and decisive,” the Times reported.

But since the U.S. entered the conflict on February 28, Iran has been anything but a pushover. The Strait of Hormuz has been shut off, crippling global trade, and America’s most expensive munitions are being wasted with little effect. Bombing around the Middle East is still ongoing, and Trump made his most worrying threat just this morning, writing that “a whole civilization will die” if the Iranian regime does not make a deal. If only any member of Trump’s Cabinet had a spine, maybe this bloody conflict could have been avoided.