US President Donald Trump has described the ongoing conflict with Iran as “small potatoes” while defending Vice President JD Vance’s decision not to characterise the months-long fighting as a war.
Trump made the remarks on Friday during an exchange with reporters in the Oval Office, where he was asked about Vance’s comments a day earlier that the confrontation with Iran should not be described as a “war.”
Trump said US strikes against Iran had become “intermittent” and argued that the situation did not necessarily fit the conventional definition of a war.
“I can understand what he’s saying,” Trump said of Vance’s position, adding, “I call it a military conflict because it’s small potatoes for us. It’s not a big thing.”
Vance, speaking at a White House press briefing on Thursday, rejected the use of the term “war” to describe the US confrontation with Iran. He also declined to predict whether the six-month-old conflict would end before the November 3 midterm elections, as Republicans seek to maintain their narrow majorities in Congress.
“I wouldn’t call it a war,” Vance said when asked whether the fighting could end before Americans head to the polls. “Right now, there is no active shooting.”
Vance’s comments came despite Iran firing at US ally Kuwait on Thursday in retaliation for a series of US strikes against Iranian targets earlier in the week.
Trump also sought to put the US death toll in the conflict into perspective, noting that the number of American military fatalities was lower than in several previous US conflicts.
“We did Venezuela and we did this. In Venezuela, we lost nobody,” Trump said, referring to the January US military operation that resulted in the capture of former Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro and his transfer to New York to face federal drug-trafficking charges.
“And this, we lost 18 people. And, in Vietnam we lost 100,000 people. And in other conflicts, we lost tens of thousands of people,” he added.
Records from the US National Archives put the total number of US military deaths during the Vietnam War at 58,220.
Pressed on whether it was appropriate to describe the Iran conflict as “small potatoes” when 18 US service members had been killed, Trump returned to his argument that the military campaign had significantly weakened Iran’s nuclear capabilities.
Trump, who had initially suggested the conflict would last only a matter of weeks, maintained that Iran would not be allowed to acquire a nuclear weapon.
“Iran will not have a nuclear weapon because if they did you probably wouldn’t be standing here,” he told reporters.
