WASHINGTON — President Donald Trump has described the six-month-old U.S. conflict with Iran as “small potatoes,” defending Vice President JD Vance’s decision not to call it a war even as U.S. forces investigate a deadly strike that hit a wedding gathering in southern Iran.
The comments came as questions mounted over civilian casualties from the U.S. military campaign. The conflict has killed 18 U.S. service members and cost American taxpayers more than $37.5 billion, according to The Associated Press.
The U.S. military is investigating the Sept. 1 strike in Kuhestak, a town in Iran’s southern Hormozgan province, after an explosion struck a home where a wedding celebration was taking place.
Iranian authorities reported that five people died, including a child and a woman who later died in hospital, while nearly 70 others were injured. Reuters reported that its analysis of verified photographs and videos, reviewed by four weapons experts, indicated the damage was consistent with a direct hit by a U.S. munition rather than a ricochet from another target.
The United States has not publicly accepted responsibility for the incident. U.S. officials said they were examining several possibilities, including whether the casualties resulted from an American strike, an Iranian air-defense missile or an interceptor. The U.S. military has maintained that it does not target civilians.
Reuters reported that two U.S. officials said American forces had struck a telecommunications tower in the Kuhestak area on the same night. Satellite imagery placed the tower about 135 meters from the wedding site. Weapons experts consulted by Reuters said the evidence pointed more strongly to a U.S. weapon than to an Iranian air-defense missile.
Vice President Vance said Thursday that the United States was investigating the incident and that the military should learn from mistakes if civilians were harmed.
Trump’s remarks followed Vance’s statement a day earlier that he would not describe the U.S. fighting with Iran as a war. Vance said there was “no active shooting” at the time, despite Iran having launched attacks against Kuwait in retaliation for earlier U.S. strikes.
Trump said he preferred the term “military conflict,” arguing that U.S. forces have conducted intermittent airstrikes and that the campaign is limited compared with previous American wars. He also pointed to the 18 U.S. military deaths and said the operation had significantly weakened Iran’s nuclear capabilities.
The conflict began on Feb. 28, according to AP, when the United States and Israel launched airstrikes against Iran. The United States has relied on airpower and has not deployed ground troops into Iran, according to AP.
The confrontation comes against the backdrop of more than four decades of hostility between Washington and Tehran. The United States severed diplomatic relations with Iran in April 1980 after Iranian militants seized the U.S. Embassy in Tehran in November 1979 and held American diplomats hostage for 444 days. Diplomatic relations have never been restored.
The nuclear issue has remained another major source of tension. The 2015 international nuclear agreement temporarily imposed limits and monitoring on Iran’s nuclear program, but the diplomatic framework later unraveled, leaving the two countries without direct diplomatic relations.
The latest conflict has also raised broader concerns over energy security. Reuters reported that the escalation around the Strait of Hormuz pushed Brent crude above $96 a barrel, reflecting fears that continued fighting could disrupt one of the world’s most important oil-shipping routes.
For now, the wedding strike remains under U.S. investigation, while the competing descriptions of the conflict by the Trump administration underscore the political and legal questions surrounding an increasingly prolonged military campaign.
Edgardo Hernal started college at UP Diliman and received his BA in Economics from San Sebastian College, Manila, and Masters in Information Systems Management from Keller Graduate School of Management of DeVry University in Oak Brook, IL. He has 25 years of copy editing and management experience at Thomson West, a subsidiary of Thomson Reuters.
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