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Small potatoes debate
President Donald Trump said the conflict in Iran is “small potatoes” for the United States as he defended Vice President JD Vance’s position that it is not a “war.”
““small potatoes””
Trump told reporters that U.S. strikes on Iran are now “intermittent” and that “I call it a military conflict because it’s small potatoes for us. It’s not a big thing.”
The AP reported the conflict has cost U.S. taxpayers more than $37.5 billion and left 18 U.S. service members dead, while CNN said the six-month conflict has killed 18 American service-members and injured hundreds more.
Vance, speaking a day earlier, rejected the use of the word “war,” saying, “I wouldn’t call it a war,” and adding, “Right now, there is no active shooting.”
Sanctions and threats
Alongside the debate over whether the conflict is a war, the BBC reported the U.S. Treasury imposed sanctions on a Turkish bank over alleged ties to the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC), targeting Golden Global Bank in Istanbul and its branches.
The BBC said the Treasury stated Golden Global Bank “facilitated financial transactions worth tens of millions of dollars” for the IRGC, and it added that the bank denied the allegations and said it had “not conducted any banking transactions that prove” the U.S. government’s claims.
In the Oval Office, Trump described the conflict as a “trivial military clash” and threatened to strike the Iranian Fars Mountain near the Natanz uranium enrichment facility “very soon.”
The BBC also quoted U.S. Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin saying, “Financial institutions are discovering, in a harsh way, how serious we are about economic isolation.”
Envoys and escalation risk
Trump also tied his characterization of the Iran conflict to a broader set of actions, telling reporters he was dispatching envoys Jared Kushner and Steve Witkoff to Moscow and Kyiv this weekend with a proposal aimed at ending the four-year war in Ukraine.
“We have prevented them, and if any activity continues at Kolang Mountain”
Kurdistan24 reported Trump said, “We have prevented them, and if any activity continues at Kolang Mountain, we may very soon bomb that site too and destroy it,” while also reiterating that Washington had fully prevented Iran from acquiring nuclear weapons over the past five months.
The AP reported Trump said the U.S. and Israel have only carried out air strikes in the Iran war, which began Feb. 28, and have not deployed troops into the country.
CNN reported Trump said “There’s a lot of truth that we’re not fighting right now. There’s no fighting,” even as it described routine rounds of back-and-forth strikes and the conflict’s cost to U.S. taxpayers and service members.