{"id":278475,"date":"2026-09-04T20:50:09","date_gmt":"2026-09-04T20:50:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/278475\/"},"modified":"2026-09-04T20:50:09","modified_gmt":"2026-09-04T20:50:09","slug":"trump-calls-iran-conflict-small-potatoes-and-says-he-agrees-with-vance-that-its-not-a-war","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/278475\/","title":{"rendered":"Trump calls Iran conflict \u2018small potatoes\u2019 and says he agrees with Vance that it\u2019s not a \u2018war\u2019"},"content":{"rendered":"

By AAMER MADHANI<\/p>\n

WASHINGTON (AP) \u2014 President Donald Trump on Friday said the conflict in Iran<\/a> is \u201csmall potatoes\u201d as he defended Vice President JD Vance<\/a> for asserting that months of on-and-off attacks in the Middle East are not a \u201cwar.\u201d<\/a><\/p>\n

Asked during an Oval Office exchange about Vance\u2019s comments made a day earlier, Trump noted that U.S. strikes on Iran are now \u201cintermittent\u201d and seemed to downplay the intensity of a war that\u2019s cost U.S. taxpayers more than $37.5 billion and left 18 U.S. service members dead.<\/p>\n

\u201cI can understand what he\u2019s saying,\u201d said Trump. He added, \u201cI call it a military conflict because it\u2019s small potatoes for us. It\u2019s not a big thing.\u201d<\/p>\n

Vance on Thursday, during a White House press briefing, rejected the use of the word \u201cwar\u201d to describe the U.S. fighting<\/a> with Iran and steered clear of predicting that the 6-month-old conflict would be over by November\u2019s midterm elections, in which Republicans are trying to hang on to their narrow majorities in Congress<\/a>.<\/p>\n

\u201cI wouldn\u2019t call it a war,\u201d Vance said after being asked during a White House press briefing about whether the fighting could end before voters cast their ballots in the Nov. 3 congressional elections. \u201cRight now, there is no active shooting.\u201d<\/p>\n

Vance\u2019s assertion came even as Iran fired<\/a> at U.S. Gulf ally Kuwait on Thursday in retaliation for rounds of U.S. strikes on Iran earlier in the week.<\/p>\n

Trump in Friday\u2019s 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., along with Israel, have only carried out air strikes in the Iran war, which began on Feb. 28, and has not deployed troops into the country.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe did Venezuela and we did this. In Venezuela, we lost nobody,\u201d said Trump, referring to the January U.S. military operation to seize former Venezuelan President Nicol\u00e1s Maduro and spirit him to New York City to face federal drug trafficking charges. \u201cAnd this, we lost 18 people. And, in Vietnam we lost 100,000 people. And in other conflicts, we lost tens of thousands of people.\u201d<\/p>\n

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.<\/p>\n

Pressed by a reporter on describing the conflict as \u201csmall potatoes\u201d when 18 U.S. service members have been killed, Trump responded by reiterating his argument that the conflict\u2014one that he said at the outset of the war would last a matter of weeks\u2014has led to the defanging of Iran\u2019s nuclear program.<\/p>\n

\u201cIran will not have a nuclear weapon because if they did you probably wouldn\u2019t be standing here,\u201d Trump said.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"By AAMER MADHANI WASHINGTON (AP) \u2014 President Donald Trump on Friday said the conflict in Iran is \u201csmall…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":278476,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_share_on_mastodon":"0"},"categories":[3],"tags":[34,342,224],"class_list":["post-278475","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-iran","tag-iran","tag-iran-conflict","tag-us-iran-war"],"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@iran\/117214748493505501","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/278475","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=278475"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/278475\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/278476"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=278475"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=278475"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=278475"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}