President Donald Trump said Friday that the Iran war was “small potatoes” for the United States, in his administration’s latest bid to play down the conflict ahead of crucial midterm elections.
Trump’s comments came a day after Vice President JD Vance said that “I wouldn’t call it a war” despite an upsurge in clashes between Iran and the United States over the Strait of Hormuz.
“A lot of people don’t call it a war. I call it a military conflict because it’s small potatoes for us,” Trump told reporters in the Oval Office when asked about Vance’s remarks.
“It’s not a big thing. We did Venezuela, and we did this,” added Trump, who was surrounded by cattle ranchers invited for the signing of two executive orders on beef processing.
The six-month-old war in which 18 US troops and thousands of Iranians have died has reached a stalemate, with Tehran disrupting shipping traffic in the strategic waterway.
But with fuel prices threatening to cost Trump’s Republicans their control of Congress in November’s midterms, his administration has been trying to minimize the conflict.
Trump said the US was carrying out “intermittent strikes” but that “we’re not fighting right now.”
He reiterated his claims that the United States effectively controlled the Strait of Hormuz and had decimated Iran’s military.
“What we’ve done is amazing. We took over Venezuela and we have essentially taken over Iran,” Trump said.
Pressed on calling the war “small potatoes” when 18 service members died, an increasingly irate Trump compared the Iran war to the years-long US wars in Vietnam and Afghanistan.
“I don’t think it matters what you call it. What matters is the fact we have had tremendous success. We’ve stopped Iran from having a nuclear weapon,” he said.
