President Donald Trump 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 noted that US strikes on Iran are now “intermittent” and seemed to downplay the intensity of a war that's cost US taxpayers more than US$37.5 billion and left 18 US 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 on Thursday, during a White House press briefing, rejected the use of the word “war” to describe the US 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 during a White House press briefing about whether the fighting could end before voters cast their ballots in the November 3 congressional elections. “Right now, there is no active shooting.”
Vance’s assertion came even as Iran fired at US Gulf ally Kuwait on Thursday in retaliation for rounds of US strikes on Iran earlier in the week.
Trump in Friday's exchange with reporters added that the US death toll in the Iran conflict is relatively lower than some other recent US wars. The US, along with Israel, have only carried out air strikes in the Iran war, which began on February 28, and has not deployed troops into the country.
“We did Venezuela, and we did this. In Venezuela, we lost nobody,” said Trump, referring to the January US 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 US armed forces died during the Vietnam War, according to records from the US National Archives.
Pressed by a reporter on describing the conflict as “small potatoes" when 18 US 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.
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