In tense call, Vance knocked PM for overselling likelihood of Iran regime change — report

US Vice President JD Vance took Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to task in a Monday phone call for overstating the possibility that the US-Israeli bombing campaign in Iran could topple its regime, Axios reported Friday, citing a US source and an Israeli source.

“Before the war, Bibi really sold it to the president as being easy, as regime change being a lot likelier than it was. And the VP was clear-eyed about some of those statements,” the US source was quoted saying, using Netanyahu’s nickname.

US officials also think some of their Israeli counterparts consider the vice president insufficiently hawkish, and that the Israelis were seeking to undermine the vice president as he takes a lead role in efforts to end the war.

A senior US official quoted by Axios said that “if the Iranians can’t strike a deal with Vance, they don’t get a deal. He’s the best they’re gonna get.”

But the outlet also quoted an administration official pushing back on the narrative that Vance was eager to make a deal and get out of Iran. “It’s an Israeli op against JD,” said the official, amid reports that Iran wanted to negotiate with the vice president.

Vance’s advisers also suspect that his Israeli critics were responsible for a Hebrew media report claiming the vice president had yelled at Netanyahu over the phone about Israel’s failure to rein in soaring settler violence against Palestinians in the West Bank. US and Israeli officials have denied the claim.

An Iraq War veteran, Vance has long expressed skepticism of open-ended US military engagements, particularly in the Middle East. Before the war with Iran, he was also one of the most skeptical members of US President Donald Trump’s administration, expressing concern about the war’s length, goals and impact on US munitions, according to US sources cited by Axios.

However, Vance has publicly fallen in line with the rest of the administration in support of the ongoing bombing campaign that the US and Israel launched on Iran on February 28, some six weeks after Iran’s brutal crackdown on anti-regime protesters.

Previous reports have indicated that the head of Israel’s Mossad intelligence agency assessed ahead of the war that if the operation succeeded, the Mossad and the CIA could help spark an uprising that would topple the regime.

According to The New York Times, Netanyahu discussed the Mossad plan with the White House in the run-up to the war with Iran, and is frustrated that the plan is not materializing and that Trump could end the war “at any moment.”