On the off chance anyone’s interested in JD Vance’s opinion, America’s vice president isn’t convinced (more) military strikes against the regime in Tehran are the best option for bettering the plight of oppressed locals.

Amid rampant speculation that Donald Trump might green-light a new round of attacks on Iran in an effort to punish the government for an escalating crackdown that’s killed upwards of 500 protesters according to unverifiable reports from rights agencies, The Wall Street Journal said Vance and other members of what I’ll call the isolationist faction have asked Trump to give peace a chance.

That shouldn’t be a big ask from a man who, on his account, would’ve won the Nobel Peace Prize two or three times by now if the selection committee weren’t rigged against him. But oddly enough, Trump’s demonstrated a penchant for blowing things up, seizing government officials at gunpoint and threatening to invade other NATO members these past 12 months.

The apparent disparity between word and deed’s actually easy to reconcile. All you have to do is consult Trump’s foreign policy motto: “Peace through war.” Wait, sorry. It’s “Peace through strength,” where you’re only as strong as the last nuclear site you bombed or the last head of state you kidnapped.

Aaaanyway, the situation in Iran’s on knife edge, just like thousands of protesters being tortured as we speak in IRGC prisons. And Trump’s determined not to look like a liar vis-à-vis his promise to intervene on behalf of the demonstrators in the event Khamenei’s security personnel start ICE’ing people.

On Monday, the regime managed to organize what looked like large-scale counter-protests in a bid to show the world that not everyone in the country wants freedom after all. But the fact that the internet’s still down in Iran and cell service is extremely spotty suggests the theocracy believes the threat remains active and acute.

Citing US officials, the Journal said Vance is “urging” Trump to “try diplomacy” before bombing strategic sites or even prior to retaliating in other ways.

According to Trump himself, Iran reached out through backchannels over the weekend to gauge US interest in resuming nuclear negotiations. He also indicated that representatives for the regime will meet in the coming days with administration envoys.

And yet, in the very same breath, Trump seemed to intimate he’d rather just bomb Iran. The sort of adrenaline rush that goes along with authorizing world-changing military strikes is probably addictive and Trump’s peacemaker pretensions aside, he’s starting to look like an addict.

In the same article, the Journal said Trump is, or at least was, “lean[ing] toward authorizing fresh military strikes,” although as of this writing he “ha[dn’t] made a final decision.”

For his part, Khamenei continued to beat the propaganda drum, carrying on about national pride and pretending not to notice that somewhere between two thirds and three quarters of Iranians want him gone.

“These great rallies have completely shattered the foreign enemies’ plots,” he said, describing the pro-regime gatherings which were doubtlessly attended under threat. “This was a warning to US politicians that they should halt their deceitful actions and stop relying on traitorous hirelings,” Khamenei added. (You gotta love that: “Traitorous hirelings.”)

In a statement conveyed to the US media, Karoline Leavitt reminded Iran (and everybody else for that matter) that her boss is a mercurial mad man, drunk on power, although she didn’t put it quite that way.

“Nobody knows what President Trump is going to do except for President Trump,” she said. Truer words have never been spoken, certainly not by Leavitt.