Former VP Mike Pence Says President Trump Will “Finish The Job” In Iran

Former Vice President Mike Pence said Sunday that President Donald Trump and Israel may soon have to “finish the job” in Iran, arguing that further military action is likely despite the administration’s growing reliance on economic pressure and sanctions.

Pence’s comments place him among the strongest advocates for continued pressure on Tehran at a time when some lawmakers in both parties have questioned whether the conflict should be wound down through diplomacy rather than expanded.

His remarks came during an interview with CNN’s State of the Union from Kyiv, Ukraine, where he was meeting with Ukrainian officials and discussing both the war in Eastern Europe and ongoing tensions in the Middle East.

Pence argued that the conflict is unlikely to end through negotiations alone.

“It’s going to be absolutely imperative that we keep the pressure on, and that we keep the military assets in the region to be able to take the action that I believe is going to be inevitable,” the former vice president told host Dana Bash.

“The time’s going to come sooner rather than later when the president and our ally Israel are going to have to go in and finish the job,” Pence said.

Pence argued on Sunday that Iran’s leaders still do not believe they have been defeated, which he said makes a lasting settlement with the U.S. unlikely without continued military and economic pressure.

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Former Vice President Mike Pence on war with Iran: "I think the time is going to come sooner rather than later when the president and our ally Israel are going to have to go in and finish the job." pic.twitter.com/bh27BfFOvd

— State of the Union (@CNNSOTU) August 23, 2026

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Former Vice President Mike Pence says he's "heartened" to hear that former CIA Officer Julia Curlee – a trans woman who served as his daily briefer during the first Trump term – said that he treated her with "great dignity."

BASH: "I spoke to her earlier this week, and she said… pic.twitter.com/NmV2WS3NBy

— State of the Union (@CNNSOTU) August 23, 2026

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A transgender CIA agent who said she was fired from the Trump administration reflected on the kindness she said she received from former Vice President Mike Pence, who previously served as governor of Indiana, in an article published in The Atlantic on Aug. 17.

Julia Curlee, who served under the first Trump administration, the Biden administration and the second Trump administration before she said she was ultimately dismissed for being transgender, described being initially skeptical of how she would be treated by Pence.

“Mike Pence had built his career on public opposition to marriages like mine—to people like me,” she wrote in the article.

But by the end of her time briefing the former vice president, Curlee had quite a different opinion: “No one has affirmed my gender identity quite like Mike Pence,” she wrote.

The anecdote appears in stark contrast to Curlee’s description of her time under the second Trump administration, which rapidly advanced an agenda that made Curlee’s experience more difficult, such as requiring transgender people to identify as their assigned gender at birth on passports and stripping Curlee’s insurance coverage for estrogen.

It also contradicts the negative image Pence acquired after his 2015 signing of Indiana’s Religious Freedom Restoration Act, which sparked business boycotts and celebrity protests due to fears from the LGBTQ+ community that the law could give people free license to discriminate. RFRA’s authors disagreed with that assessment, and the legislation mirrored a federal law passed under former President Bill Clinton, but it didn’t stop the debacle from staining Pence’s reputation among the LGBTQ+ community.

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