In the middle of an Easter lunch at the White House, President Donald Trump went off script to address speculation about JD Vance's role in securing a deal to end the war in Iran.
If it doesn't happen, I'm blaming JD Vance, Trump joked, drawing laughter at the East Room event attended by senior administration officials, including the vice-president, Secretary of State Marco Rubio, and Defence Secretary Pete Hegseth. And if it does happen, Trump added, I'm taking full credit.
The remarks perfectly captured Vance's predicament as he leads a US delegation holding talks with Iran in Pakistan. It is the most challenging assignment of Vance's vice-presidency so far - one with a limited upside and plenty to lose if negotiations fail.
Vance's diplomatic mission to Islamabad is a political minefield. To make progress in reaching a permanent agreement to end the war, he will have to satisfy several stakeholders with competing interests, and who all distrust each other after a six-week military campaign that has engulfed the Middle East and roiled the global economy.
US allies are watching Vance closely to see how he'll perform, one European official said. Vance needs to step into the room and deliver something, added the official, who spoke on the condition of anonymity. Otherwise he will be diminished.
Any deal must win the support first and foremost of Trump, who has vacillated between calling for peace and threatening to destroy Iran's civilization. It will also need the backing of a weakened but still-standing regime in Tehran that has tightened control over the Strait of Hormuz, and an ally in Israel that is wary of a region-wide ceasefire. US allies in Europe that oppose the war and have been reluctant to come to America's aid in reopening the strait will also have to be convinced.
As if that's not enough, Vance will face pressure to somehow satisfy Trump's Make America Great Again (MAGA) base. Many are opposed to interventions abroad, so they will be watching his trip closely for clues about how he might handle foreign policy if he runs for president in 2028.
A former Marine who served in Iraq, Vance has been a vocal opponent of US entanglements in the past and reportedly expressed deep skepticism about launching strikes on Iran in private meetings with Trump, according to a New York Times report.
Vance has signalled a desire for restraint in American foreign policy. That's pretty hard to square with the American war against Iran, said Jeff Rathke, the president of the American-German Institute, a Washington-based think tank.
In Islamabad, the question for Vance is: can he make everyone happy? And what does success in these negotiations look like - a fully-formed peace deal, or just productive initial talks that don't scuttle the temporary ceasefire?
A White House official told the BBC that Trump had tasked the vice-president to lead the negotiations. Vance tamped down expectations before leaving Washington on Friday morning.
If the Iranians are willing to negotiate in good faith, we are certainly willing to extend an open hand, Vance told reporters. He also warned Iran not to play us, and said Trump gave the US negotiating team some pretty clear guidelines.
But even if he laid out clear goalposts ahead of time, the president has a propensity to change his mind. Vance and the rest of the US team will face the added challenge of representing a mercurial boss in Trump who has given a range of rationales for the war since launching the conflict in late February.
On Friday afternoon, when asked what he told Vance before he left for Islamabad, Trump told reporters: I wish him luck. He's got a big thing. The president said he was sending a good team and we'll see how it all turns out.
Trump's volatile negotiating style was on full display this week, in the whirlwind period leading up to the ceasefire deal reached on Tuesday. In a single 36-hour span, Trump gave Iran one day to strike a deal, warned in social media posts on Truth Social that a whole civilization will die if Iran refused to cooperate, and then finally announced a ceasefire with less than two hours left before his deadline for escalating the war.
Serving as Trump's vice-president can't be easy under normal conditions, the diplomat added, but must be especially difficult for Vance right now, given his misgivings about foreign wars. Vance has tried to distance himself from the Iran campaign, asserting that the war is not in his playbook.
Representing Trump in high-stakes negotiations may be a challenge, but Vance has been working toward this moment since taking office. He has earned Trump's trust and has been given a seat at the table in high-profile meetings and events with foreign policy leaders in the Oval Office and across Europe and Asia.
Vance made waves with a speech at the Munich Security Conference last year, where he issued a blistering critique of Europe's handling of immigration and free speech. Just this week, the vice-president travelled to Hungary to make an unprecedented re-election push for the current prime minister and close Trump ally Viktor Orbán.
But Vance reportedly hasn't always agreed with the president. Trump's own foreign policy has sometimes put Vance in the awkward position of publicly backing the type of interventions abroad that he has argued against in the past - Iran being the prime example. Despite this, Trump tapped Vance to lead the US delegation to Islamabad, a choice seen as signaling that the Trump administration was serious about reaching a deal.
US allies in the region welcomed Vance's inclusion on the team as a sign the administration wants a durable peace to end the war. It shows that America is seriously coming to the table, said Assaf Orion, a retired Israeli brigadier general.
Vance will have to tune out the chatter back in Washington to deliver in negotiations with Iran. His past criticisms of foreign intervention will be juxtaposed with his role in the Trump administration's current military engagement, making the outcome of these talks critical for his political future.
Nevertheless, Trump threw him into the deep end, and now Vance is under pressure to deliver a victory for the president while not damaging his own political future.
He's not negotiating JD Vance's agreement with the Iranians. He's there in Islamabad to try to get the best deal the president can agree to, said Rathke. But that has some risks for the vice-president, in case Trump agrees to something and then later loses his enthusiasm for it. Trump may try to blame the negotiator.
