Trump calls Iran conflict ‘small potatoes’ as he backs Vance
Trump said he calls the Iran fighting a military conflict, backing JD Vance’s refusal to label it a war.
By Frankie Delgado · News Reporter
2 min read
President Donald Trump called the Iran fighting “small potatoes” for the United States on Sept. 4, describing it as a military conflict while backing Vice President JD Vance’s view that it should not be called a war.
Speaking to reporters in the Oval Office, Trump said: “I call it a military conflict because it’s small potatoes for us. It’s not a big thing,” according to CBS News and PBS NewsHour.
Why did Trump call the Iran conflict a military conflict?
Trump was answering questions about Vance’s comments at a White House briefing the day before. Vance said he would not describe the conflict as a war and said there was “no active shooting” at that moment, CBS reported.
Trump said “a lot of people don’t call it a war” and said he could understand Vance’s position. He also said U.S. strikes in Iran had been “intermittent” and that “we’re not fighting right now,” PBS reported. Those were Trump’s characterizations of the situation.
The president’s use of the term was not consistent across all of his public comments that day. CBS reported that Trump used the word “war” several times in a Truth Social post Friday morning.
What did Trump say about casualties and recent strikes?
Trump compared the Iran conflict with longer U.S. wars and cited 18 Americans killed in the fighting, PBS reported. He presented the number as part of his argument that the current conflict was smaller in scale than past wars.
Fresh hostilities had been reported that week. PBS said Iran and the United States traded strikes after a month without fighting, and that Iran also fired at Kuwait.
Trump also told reporters that the U.S. was protecting oil tankers from Iranian attacks in the Strait of Hormuz, according to NBC News. He asserted that the U.S. controlled the waterway and had prevented Iran from acquiring a nuclear weapon. Those assertions were made by Trump and were not independently verified in the reporting cited here.
The exchange put the White House’s wording at the center of the moment: Trump called the fighting a military conflict, while Vance said he would not call it a war, even as renewed strikes had been reported in the region.
This story draws on original reporting from NBC News.