{"id":213905,"date":"2026-09-03T22:19:12","date_gmt":"2026-09-03T22:19:12","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/people\/213905\/"},"modified":"2026-09-03T22:19:12","modified_gmt":"2026-09-03T22:19:12","slug":"jd-vance-denies-iran-war-is-even-a-war-at-all","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/people\/213905\/","title":{"rendered":"JD Vance denies Iran war is even a war at all"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>On Thursday, Vice President <a href=\"https:\/\/www.salon.com\/topic\/jd-vance\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">JD Vance<\/a> held a White House press briefing, the first since former press secretary <a href=\"https:\/\/www.salon.com\/2026\/08\/12\/karoline-leavitt-is-leaving-her-post-as-white-house-press-secretary\/\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">Karoline Leavitt\u2019s departure<\/a> last month, in which he defended the <a href=\"https:\/\/www.salon.com\/2026\/09\/02\/data-center-backlash-is-panicking-tech-oligarchs-ahead-of-midterms\/\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">energy costs of data centers<\/a> and deflected on high gas prices. Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent has previously claimed prices would lower to $3 per gallon by Labor Day. (That has yet to happen.) Vance blamed Iran for energy costs remaining high, but it was his comments about the ongoing Iran war that drew special attention.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>In February, the Trump administration joined Israel in attacking Iran, in what the president repeatedly <a href=\"https:\/\/www.washingtonpost.com\/politics\/2026\/08\/28\/friday-marks-six-months-since-trump-launched-war-iran-now-he-stuck\/\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">promised<\/a> was to be a short affair, roughly four to six weeks. Around the same time, Vance himself <a href=\"https:\/\/www.washingtonpost.com\/politics\/2026\/02\/26\/vance-no-chance-us-will-be-drawn-out-war-middle-east\/\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">claimed<\/a> there was \u201cno chance\u201d the war would drag out. Now six months later, the U.S. has reported 18 military personnel killed and more than \u200b750 wounded, with a ballooning cost <a href=\"https:\/\/www.the-independent.com\/news\/world\/americas\/us-politics\/jd-vance-iran-war-press-briefing-b3044405.html\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">estimated<\/a> somewhere between $71 billion and $118 billion. According to the independent defense research portal <a href=\"https:\/\/militaryspend.org\/iran-war-casualties\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">MilitarySpend<\/a>, between 1,700 to 3,700 civilians across the Middle East have died in the war, most of them Iranian.<\/p>\n<p>When asked by CNN\u2019s Kaitlan Collins whether the war might conclude by the November midterm elections, Vance said it was up to the Iranians, but denied it was even a war at all. He gave no timeline for when things might end.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cI don\u2019t \u2026 I wouldn\u2019t call it a war,\u201d Vance said, claiming that major combat operations lasted for about six weeks and destroyed Iran\u2019s nuclear facilities. \u201cRight now, there is no active shooting,\u201d he continued, but admitted there have been times in which the conflict has \u201cflared up.\u201d The last week has been marked by <a href=\"https:\/\/www.aljazeera.com\/economy\/2026\/9\/1\/oil-prices-climb-as-us-iranian-attacks-stoke-fears-of-escalation\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">escalating<\/a> exchanges of fire between the two sides.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: center;\">Start your day with essential news from Salon.<br \/><a href=\"https:\/\/www.salon.com\/newsletter?utm_source=onsite&amp;utm_medium=organic&amp;utm_campaign=crash-course-edit-signup\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener nofollow\">Sign up for our free morning newsletter<\/a>, Crash Course.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cWhen you ask when will this end, you\u2019re asking me a question like, when will the Iranians stop shooting at ships? I think the reality is I don\u2019t know the answer to that question. You would have to ask the Iranians,\u201d Vance said.<\/p>\n<p>Earlier during the briefing, he said Iran\u2019s grip on the Strait of Hormuz was \u201ceffectively gone\u201d and it\u2019s a \u201cdiminishing asset.\u201d Vance also claimed the U.S. never targets civilians in combat. <a href=\"https:\/\/www.hrw.org\/news\/2026\/04\/08\/questions-and-answers-us-israel-iran-and-the-laws-of-war\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">Numerous<\/a> human rights <a href=\"https:\/\/www.americanprogress.org\/article\/the-human-and-environmental-costs-of-the-war-in-iran\/\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">groups<\/a>, as well as the <a href=\"https:\/\/news.un.org\/en\/story\/2026\/07\/1167973\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">United Nations<\/a>, describe the conflict as a war.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n<p class=\"red_box\">Read more<\/p>\n<p class=\"white_box\">about the Iran war<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"On Thursday, Vice President JD Vance held a White House press briefing, the first since former press secretary&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":213906,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_share_on_mastodon":"0"},"categories":[119],"tags":[169,168],"class_list":["post-213905","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-jd-vance","tag-james-david-vance","tag-jd-vance"],"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@people\/117209436325367564","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/people\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/213905","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/people\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/people\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/people\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/people\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=213905"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/people\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/213905\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/people\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/213906"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/people\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=213905"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/people\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=213905"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/people\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=213905"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}