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Trump Calls Iran Conflict ‘Small Potatoes’ and Defends Vance’s Position That It’s Not a ‘War’

From Asharq Al-Awsat · () English

Summarized by DistantNews. Read the original for the full story.

At a glance

News Named sources Ongoing story
  • President Donald Trump described the conflict with Iran as “small potatoes” while defending Vice President JD Vance’s refusal to call it a war.
  • The conflict has cost US taxpayers more than $37.5 billion and killed 18 US service members, according to the article.
  • Trump said US and Israeli airstrikes had weakened Iran’s nuclear program and warned that Iran would not be allowed to obtain a nuclear weapon.

President Donald Trump has dismissed the conflict with Iran as “small potatoes,” even as the fighting has cost US taxpayers more than $37.5 billion and left 18 US service members dead.

Speaking to reporters in the Oval Office on Friday, Trump defended Vice President JD Vance’s claim that months of intermittent attacks did not amount to a war. Trump said US strikes had become intermittent and that many people did not call the situation a war. He said he preferred the term “military conflict” because it was not a major undertaking for the United States.

I call it a military conflict because it’s small potatoes for us. It's not a big thing.

· Donald TrumpTrump explained why he rejected describing the conflict with Iran as a war.

Vance made the argument at a White House briefing the previous day. Asked whether the six-month-old conflict could end before voters cast ballots in the November 3 midterm elections, he said he would not call it a war and noted that there was no active shooting. His comments came after Iran fired at Kuwait in retaliation for US strikes earlier in the week.

I wouldn’t call it a war. Right now, there is no active shooting.

· JD VanceVance defended his description of the six-month-old conflict at a White House briefing.

Trump also compared the death toll with other US conflicts. He said the United States had lost nobody during its January operation in Venezuela, which he described as an effort to seize former President Nicolás Maduro and take him to New York to face federal drug-trafficking charges. Vietnam, he said, had cost 100,000 American lives, while other conflicts had killed tens of thousands. National Archives records cited in the article put US military deaths during the Vietnam War at 58,220.

When a reporter challenged the description of the Iran conflict as “small potatoes” given the deaths, Trump repeated that the fighting had weakened Iran’s nuclear program. He said Iran would not have a nuclear weapon, warning that otherwise the people standing before him might not be alive.

Iran will not have a nuclear weapon because if they did you probably wouldn’t be standing here.

· Donald TrumpTrump defended the conflict by arguing that it had weakened Iran’s nuclear program.
About this summary

Originally published by Asharq Al-Awsat. Summarized and contextualized automatically by DistantNews, with a note on how the source frames the story. Not individually reviewed before publishing. How this works.

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