This was as close to an admission of failure in Iran as Donald Trump has come.

The President’s decision to reassign his Vice-President from Iran diplomacy to tackling what he calls corruption and crime in Democrat-controlled cities and states was not intended as a promotion.

It was partly a public rebuke of JD Vance, who blamed the Republicans’ midterm losses on the economic consequences of the Iran war (an assessment supported by much of the polling). But it was also a performance-related demotion. The man who negotiated a short-lived truce earlier in the conflict, and was expected to play a central role in future talks, had effectively been sidelined.

Read more: Trump just demoted Vance. It’s as close as he’s come to admitting he failed