OREANDA-NEWS   US Vice President Jay Dee Vance is preparing to become the chief negotiator for a settlement in Iran, but some Israeli politicians may oppose his candidacy, the Axios portal reported on Friday.

"Vance's advisers believe that some in Israel are trying to undermine the authority of the vice president, perhaps because they consider him insufficiently belligerent," the portal reports, citing sources, stressing that Israel officially denies this.

Axios recalls that initially "Vance was extremely skeptical of Israel's optimistic pre-war assessment of the development of the war."

"Currently, he expects the war to last for several more weeks," the portal reports, citing American and Israeli sources.

In addition, the portal claims that Vance and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu "had a difficult phone conversation."

"On Monday, White House officials began to suspect that some representatives of the Israeli authorities were trying to smear Vance," the portal reports.

"Before the war, Bibi (Netanyahu) convinced the president (of the United States) that it was easy, that regime change was much more likely than it actually was. But the vice president soberly assessed some of these statements," said the American interlocutor of the portal.

According to Israeli and American Axios sources, during a conversation with the Israeli Prime Minister, Vance mentioned that several of Netanyahu's forecasts regarding the war "turned out to be too optimistic, especially when it came to the prospects of a popular uprising to overthrow the regime."

A number of right-wing Israeli media outlets have since published articles criticizing Vance. "This is an Israeli operation against J.D.," a US administration official told Axios, commenting on the publication that "the Iranians consider Vance inclined to make a deal and leave."

Meanwhile, the portal notes, Vance's candidacy as the chief negotiator from the United States may indeed be preferable for Iran.

"Vance's high status in the administration and his well-known opposition to unfinished conflicts abroad make him a more attractive interlocutor for Iranians compared to (Special envoys Steve) Whitkoff and (Jared) Kushner, who led the two previous rounds of failed negotiations," Axios quoted unnamed White House officials as saying.

"If the Iranians can't make a deal with Vance, they won't get it. He's the best they can get," a senior administration official told the portal.