Trump insists Iran ‘not a war’ FOUR times as 767 troops lie wounded and gas lingers over $4 a gallon
President Donald Trump insisted Friday that the US conflict with Iran is not a war -doubling down on his assertion that the deadly, more than six-month military campaign in Iran is ‘small potatoes.’
Speaking to reporters in the Oval Office, Trump was asked about the war in Iran, and to respond to Vice President JD Vance’s claim, one day earlier, that the ongoing conflict is ‘not a war.’
‘I’ll tell you what,’ Trump said. ‘A lot of people call it a war. I call it a military conflict, because it’s small potatoes,’ Trump said.
At least 18 US service members have been killed in the war with Iran since it began in February 2026, according to data from the Department of Defense, and a much higher number – at least 767 US service members – have been injured.
But Trump pressed on, repeatedly characterizing the military conflict as a small-scale operation compared to previous conflicts, such as the Vietnam War, which he invoked several times.
‘It’s not a big thing,’ Trump continued. ‘We did Venezuela, and we did this, and Venezuela [we] lost nobody,’ Trump said, referring to the US capture of former Venezuelan leader Nicolas Maduro, ‘and [in] this, we lost 18 people.’
President Donald Trump speaks in the Oval Office. Trump insisted the US conflict with Iran was not a ‘war,’ describing the fighting as ‘small potatoes,’ despite multiple US casualties
Roughly 50,000 US troops were deployed across a portion of the Strait of Hormuz to enforce Trump’s naval blockade and squeeze the Iranian regime back to the negotiating table
US cruise missiles are launched at Iranian military targets along the Strait of Hormuz
Trump listens as US Secretary of Agriculture Brooke Rollins speaks in the Oval Office
Join the discussion
Is Trump right to call the Iran conflict ‘not a war’?
‘It’s intermittent. We do intermittent conflicts,’ Trump said of the war with Iran. ‘It’s very intermittent.’
‘We’ve been in there for five months,’ Trump said of the US war with Iran, which stretched past the six-month mark roughly seven days ago. ‘And in five months, what did we do? We stopped them from having an Israeli war,’ Trump said of the US strikes in Iran.
‘If we didn’t go in there, you wouldn’t have Israel right now,’ Trump told reporters. ‘You wouldn’t have the Middle East. And they probably would go [at] European cities, and our cities next,’ he continued. ‘But we stopped them, in five months.’
Pressed by a reporter about the conflict, Trump responded by firing back, ‘How long were we in Vietnam?’
‘I don’t think it matters what you call it,’ Trump added, a moment later. ‘What matters is we had tremendous success.’
