President Donald Trump on Friday said the conflict in Iran is “small potatoes” as he defended Vice President JD Vance for asserting that months of on-and-off attacks in the Middle East are not a “war.”
Asked during an Oval Office exchange about Vance’s comments made a day earlier, Trump said U.S. strikes on Iran are now “intermittent” and “a lot of people don’t call it a war.” The conflict has cost U.S. taxpayers more than $37.5 billion and left 18 U.S. service members dead.
“I can understand what he’s saying,” said Trump. He added: “I call it a military conflict because it’s small potatoes for us. It’s not a big thing.”
Vance, during a White House press briefing Thursday, rejected the use of the word “war” to describe the U.S. fighting with Iran and steered clear of predicting that the 6-month-old conflict would be over by November’s midterm elections, in which Republicans are trying to hang on to their narrow majorities in Congress.
“I wouldn’t call it a war,” Vance said after being asked about whether the fighting could end before voters cast their ballots in the Nov. 3 elections. “Right now, there is no active shooting.”
Vance’s assertion came even as Iran fired at U.S. Gulf ally Kuwait on Thursday in retaliation for rounds of U.S. strikes on Iran earlier in the week.
Trump in Friday’s exchange with reporters added that the U.S. death toll in the Iran conflict is relatively lower than some other recent U.S. wars. The U.S. and Israel have only carried out air strikes in the Iran war, which began Feb. 28, and have not deployed troops into the country.
“We did Venezuela and we did this. In Venezuela, we lost nobody,” said Trump, referring to the January U.S. military operation to seize former Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro and spirit him to New York City 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.”
A total of 58,220 members of the U.S. armed forces died during the Vietnam War, according to records from the U.S. National Archives.
Pressed by a reporter on describing the conflict as “small potatoes” when 18 U.S. service members have been killed, Trump responded by reiterating his argument that the conflict — one that he said at the outset of the war would last a matter of weeks — has led to the defanging of Iran’s nuclear program.
“Iran will not have a nuclear weapon because if they did you probably wouldn’t be standing here,” Trump said.