President Donald Trump waved off the scale of the ongoing US-Israel military campaign against Iran on Friday, telling reporters the seven-month-old war amounts to “small potatoes.” Even as it has claimed 18 American service members and pushed energy prices higher worldwide.
Donald Trump backs JD Vance’s argument that the US-Iran fighting is not currently a war
The comments came during an Oval Office signing event, where journalists pressed Trump on remarks Vice President JD Vance had made a day earlier at a White House briefing. Vance had argued that intense combat between US and Iranian forces no longer justified calling the situation a war. “I wouldn’t call it a war. Right now, there is no active shooting,” Vance told reporters, pointing out that the heaviest fighting wrapped up within six weeks. He conceded that “there have been places where this has flared up.”
Trump largely sided with his vice president’s framing, saying there was “a lot of truth” to it, though he settled on calling the situation a “military conflict” rather than dropping the subject entirely. Drawing a comparison to the January 3 US operation that captured Venezuelan leader Nicolas Maduro, Trump downplayed the human cost of the Iran campaign: “It’s not a big thing. We did Venezuela, and we did this. In Venezuela, we lost nobody. In this, we lost 18 people.”
He described the current US military posture as limited in scope. “We do intermittent strikes,” Trump said. “We’re not fighting right now. There’s no fighting. We’re taking out a lot of oil. We control the Hormuz Strait. We control it very strongly.”
Donald Trump has avoided the word “war” since fighting with Iran broke out on February 28, once branding it in March as “an excursion that will keep us out of a war.” Observers point to the ongoing standoff with Congress as a likely motive; lawmakers passed a symbolic war powers resolution in June demanding either a halt to strikes or formal authorization, though the administration has continued operating without it.
