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US President Donald Trump on Friday (local time) backed Vice President JD Vance's characterisation of the ongoing confrontation with Iran as not amounting to a war, describing the hostilities as an "intermittent" military conflict and calling it "small potatoes" for Washington.
Speaking to reporters at the Oval Office, Trump, when asked to clarify Vance's "not a war" remark after recent US strikes against Iran for the first time in several weeks, said, "A lot of people don't call it a war. I call it a military conflict because it's small potatoes for us; it's not a big thing." The US President said that he understood Vance's position and argued that the current situation differed significantly from prolonged US wars in which American casualties were far higher. "In Vietnam, you lost 100,000 people and in other conflicts, you lost tens of thousands of people," Trump said, referring to the scale of casualties in past conflicts. He added that the current confrontation was "intermittent" because the United States was carrying out strikes rather than engaging in continuous fighting. "I could see somebody not calling it a war," Trump said. Trump also claimed that the United States currently controls the Strait of Hormuz, a strategically vital waterway through which a significant volume of global oil supplies passes, which has seen major disruption due to the conflict in West Asia. "There's no fighting. We're taking out a lot of oil, we control the Hormuz Strait, and we control it very strongly," Trump said, adding that US forces had conducted strikes on areas around the strait and destroyed radar installations. According to Trump, US forces had also destroyed aircraft and other military assets that had been used to protect Iran's position around the Strait of Hormuz. "We took out some aircraft; we took out some other things that protect for themused to protect the Hormuz Strait when they had it under very tight control. But now we control it," he said. Trump further claimed that US forces had struck a large number of boats and ships in the area, saying that maritime traffic continued to pass through the waterway on a daily basis. "Last night we took a lot of boats; a lot of ships came through and they come through every day," Trump said. Defending his administration's description of the confrontation, Trump contrasted the reported US losses in the Iran conflict with casualties in previous American military engagements. "In Venezuela, we lost nobody, and this we lost 18 people," he said, without elaborating further during the exchange. Trump's comments come as the administration seeks to define the nature and scope of US military action against Iran while emphasising that the confrontation does not represent a conventional, sustained war. Vance had earlier said that he would not describe the conflict with Iran as a war. Trump, while acknowledging that some people may use different terminology, said he considered "military conflict" the more appropriate description. "It's a military conflict, but it's very intermittent," Trump said. The remarks underscore the administration's effort to distinguish the current military operations from large-scale, prolonged US wars of the past, while Trump continues to characterise American military actions against Iran as limited and strategically focused. (ANI)
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