Vice President JD Vance downplayed the U.S.’s conflict with Iran on Thursday, saying he “wouldn’t call it a war” — contrasting President Donald Trump’s ongoing references to a “war that we’re easily winning.”
“The phrase ‘an end to the war,’ I want to push back on that just a little bit because major combat operations are currently not ongoing, and they haven’t been ongoing in a very long time,” Vance said while hosting the White House press briefing Thursday.
When asked about when the monthslong war might end, Vance told reporters he can’t provide an “artificial timeline” should Iranians “start blowing up oil and gas ships” after that hypothetical deadline.
“It would be irresponsible for us to write out our strategy and our timeline for an Iranian nation that simply cannot honor its commitments and cannot stop shooting at commercial ships,” Vance said.
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Trump has adopted a much different posture to describe the ongoing hostilities with Iran. The president has continued to call it a “war” when speaking to reporters and posting about the conflict on Truth Social.
In a post just hours before Vance’s briefing, Trump called the conflict a war as he criticized the media for reporting on depleted munitions stockpiles putting a strain on combat operations in the Middle East, which the White House has vehemently denied.
“The people and Media Outlets that keep harping on the fact that we have no ammunition (And they are 100% wrong!), are actually treasonous. They do it because they would rather see the United States LOSE a War that we’re easily WINNING,” Trump wrote Thursday on Truth Social.
While Vance says an end to the conflict depends on Iran’s action, Trump has continued to express confidence that the war is “going to end pretty soon,” suggesting this week that the most recent exchange of fire between the U.S. and Iran won’t last “too long.”
The U.S. resumed major strikes against Iran this week and targeted assets in the Strait of Hormuz. Trump threatened Iran with the “biggest attack of them all,” but the country still launched retaliatory strikes on the U.S.’s regional allies, including Jordan, Bahrain and Kuwait.
The Strait of Hormuz has remained a critical juncture throughout the conflict because a significant amount of the global oil supply passes through it. As Vance noted Thursday, Iran has been able to have a substantial “effect on world energy markets” by targeting commercial shipping vessels.
The U.S. has maintained a heavy naval presence in the strait. Trump floated renaming the waterway “Trump Strait” on Wednesday on Truth Social, though he later said he was “just throwing that out.”
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