WASHINGTON, 04 Sept. - (ANA) - More than six months after President Donald Trump announced the start of a war against Iran that has claimed the lives of 18 service members, injured at last 750 more, and cost between $71 billion and $118 billion, Vice President JD Vance now says the war is not a war at all.

 

The vice president was taking a turn at the lectern in the James Brady Briefing Room on Thursday — the first White House press briefing since former press secretary Karoline Leavitt’s departure — when he was asked to offer a timeline as to when the Trump administration would consider the war to be over and whether that point would be reached before the November midterm elections.

 

Vance replied that he “wouldn’t call it a war” and claimed there was “no active shooting” between American and Iranian forces happening while downplaying the exchanges of fire that have taken place as points where hostilities have merely “flared up.”

 

When pressed on whether his response meant it was solely the responsibility of Tehran to determine when the war the U.S. started would end, he said Washington has “a responsibility” to respond to attacks on commercial shipping traffic because the U.S. is the sole country with the “capability to ensure that the Iranians are not destroying world energy markets.”

 

Vance’s evasive comments came just a day after Trump dismissed Iran’s latest strikes on US targets as a “love tap” in response to US forces hitting Iranian targets “very hard” in recent air strikes.  

 

Despite Vance’s refusal to call the war a war or lay out a timeline for it to end, it appears the Trump administration is preparing to keep already-overextended forces on a combat footing in the Middle East region for the foreseeable future.  

 

Meanwhile, US president Donald Trump lashed out at news outlets for reporting on the stockpile depletions on Thursday, attacking the press as “treasonous SCUM that refuses to accurately report on our Military Operation in Iran” in a Truth Social post in which he also alleged that the Pentagon has “virtually unlimited amounts of Mid to High Grade Ammunition, far more than we could ever use for this, or for any other War.”- (ANA) -

 

AB/ANA/04 September 2026 - - -