President Trump calls the Iran conflict "small potatoes" for America and defends Vice President Vance's refusal to call the six-month fight a "war," arguing the campaign defanged Iran's nuclear program at a fraction of the cost of past wars.
President Donald Trump on Friday shrugged off the U.S. campaign against Iran as "small potatoes" for America, defending Vice President JD Vance after Vance declined to call the months-long fight a "war." Trump made the remarks during an Oval Office exchange with reporters, brushing aside questions about the conflict's cost and insisting the mission that mattered -- stripping Iran of its nuclear program -- is already accomplished.
The president's comments came one day after Vance told reporters at the White House that he would not describe the fighting as a war. "Right now, there is no active shooting," Vance said Thursday, even as he declined to predict whether the six-month-old conflict would be fully resolved before November's midterm elections.
Asked about Vance's remarks, Trump said U.S. strikes on Iran have become "intermittent" and noted that "a lot of people don't call it a war." He said he understood exactly what his vice president was getting at.
"I call it a military conflict because it's small potatoes for us. It's not a big thing," Trump said. "I can understand what he's saying."
The comments reflect an administration confident that America has contained a dangerous adversary without being dragged into a protracted ground war. The conflict, which began Feb. 28, has been waged almost entirely through U.S. and Israeli air strikes, with no American troops deployed inside Iran.
Trump acknowledged the fight has not been free, noting the conflict has cost U.S. taxpayers more than $37.5 billion and left 18 American service members dead. But he argued the toll is remarkably low by the standards of recent American wars.
"We did Venezuela and we did this. In Venezuela, we lost nobody," Trump said, referring to the January operation that captured former Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro. "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."
The comparison underscored the administration's central argument: that a focused, air-power-driven campaign neutralized Iran's nuclear ambitions at a fraction of the cost of earlier military commitments. Even as he minimized the scale of the fight, Trump stressed that the operation's core objective had been met.
Vance's Thursday briefing marked one of the administration's clearest attempts yet to frame the Iran conflict as a manageable security operation rather than an open-ended war. He steered clear of guaranteeing the fighting would end before voters cast ballots on Nov. 3, a question with real stakes for Republicans defending narrow majorities in Congress.
Iran fired at U.S. Gulf ally Kuwait on Thursday in retaliation for rounds of American strikes earlier in the week, a reminder that Tehran can still lash out. The administration, however, has treated such flare-ups as the death throes of a regime whose nuclear program has been dismantled.
Pressed on whether describing a fight that has cost 18 American lives as "small potatoes" was appropriate, Trump pointed to the stakes of the mission itself. He repeated his view that the campaign has defanged Iran's nuclear program for good.
"Iran will not have a nuclear weapon because if they did you probably wouldn't be standing here," Trump told the reporter.
That argument has become the administration's closing pitch on the conflict: a dangerous regime stopped, a nuclear program dismantled, and an American military presence kept out of a ground war. Trump predicted at the outset of the campaign that it would last a matter of weeks; months later, he is framing the intermittent strikes that remain as mopping-up operations rather than an ongoing war.
With early voting already underway in several states and the midterms roughly two months out, the administration is betting voters will judge the conflict the way Trump described it Friday -- a costly but contained operation that achieved its objective without the kind of prolonged sacrifice Americans have endured in past wars.
President Trump calls the Iran conflict "small potatoes" for America and defends Vice President Vance's refusal to call the six-month fight a "war," arguing the campaign defanged Iran's nuclear program at a fraction of the cost of past wars.
freedomlinedispatch.com
