Vance used his speech to differentiate his opposition to Ukraine aid from his steadfast commitment to Israel. “I’m supportive of Israel and their war against Hamas. I certainly admire the Ukrainians who are fighting against Russia, but I do not think that it is in America’s interest to continue to fund an effectively never-ending war in Ukraine,” Vance said. “It’s sort of weird that this town assumes that Israel and Ukraine are exactly the same. They’re not, of course, and I think it’s important to analyze them in separate buckets.” ...

The Ohio senator explained that emboldening Israel and allied Sunni Arab nations would serve as a “regional counterweight to Iran” and prevent a wider conflict from developing — thereby lessening the odds of a regional war that would necessitate greater American involvement. 

“The way that we get there in Israel is by combining the Abraham Accords approach with the defeat of Hamas. That gets us to a place where Israel and the Sunni nations can play a regional counterweight to Iran,” Vance said. “We don’t want a broader regional war. We don’t want to get involved in a broader regional war. The best way to do that is to ensure that Israel, with the Sunni nations, can actually police their own region of the world. That allows us to spend less time and resources on the Middle East and focus more on East Asia, in the same way that we want our own allies to do the job in Europe [with Ukraine].”