‘I Wouldn’t Call it a War’: Vance Downplays Conflict With Iran, Even as Strikes Continue

Vice President J.D. Vance said Thursday that he would not characterize the United States as being at war with Iran, even as the two countries have exchanged strikes in recent days and the Trump Administration has declined to say when a conflict now stretching beyond six months might finally end.

“I wouldn’t call it a war,” Vance told reporters at a White House press briefing, the first since Karoline Leavitt stepped down as press secretary last month. “Right now, there is no active shooting.”

The distinction was striking after a renewed burst of hostilities this week, including American strikes inside Iran and Iranian attacks in the region. But it echoed an argument that President Trump and other Republicans made in the earliest days of the conflict: that the United States was carrying out a limited military operation rather than embarking on another prolonged Middle Eastern war, which, under the Constitution, would require congressional approval.

More than six months later, that distinction has become increasingly difficult to sustain. The United States has repeatedly bombed targets inside Iran as Tehran attacks commercial shipping vessels through the Strait of Hormuz, contributing to higher energy prices.

Vance acknowledged what he called a recent “flare-up” but argued that the most intensive phase of the American campaign had ended long ago. “Major combat operations are currently not ongoing, and they haven’t been ongoing in a very long time,” he said.

He said Operation Epic Fury, the large-scale campaign that followed last year’s Operation Midnight Hammer, lasted roughly six weeks. The earlier operation, he said, destroyed Iranian nuclear facilities, while Epic Fury severely damaged Iran’s conventional military and its ability to produce weapons and rebuild its nuclear program.

But Vance offered little indication of when the broader confrontation might end, saying the Administration would not commit itself to a timeline while Iran continued threatening commercial shipping and global energy supplies. Asked whether the conflict would be over before November’s midterm elections, Vance said he did not know. “You would have to ask the Iranians,” he said, adding: “When will the Iranians stop shooting at ships?”

The answer underscored the open-ended nature of a conflict that Trump and others in the Administration repeatedly predicted would be brief. As recently as Wednesday, the President said he did not believe it would last “much longer.” But his Administration is simultaneously intensifying economic pressure on Iran, maintaining a naval blockade, and reserving the option of further military strikes if Iran attacks American interests or interferes with commercial shipping.

History of avoiding the word “war”

Presidents have long resisted the “war” label in conflicts undertaken without a formal declaration of war. Harry Truman called the American intervention in Korea a United Nations “police action,” while Bill Clinton avoided describing NATO’s bombing campaign in Kosovo as a war. Barack Obama similarly argued that the 2011 intervention in Libya did not constitute a “war” requiring congressional authorization.

In March, Trump openly acknowledged that referring to the conflict as “war” carried legal significance because Congress had not authorized it. “I won’t use the word ‘war’ because they say, if you use the word war, that’s maybe not a good thing to do,” he told House Republicans at the time. “They don’t like the word ‘war,’ because you’re supposed to get approval, so I’ll use the word ‘military operation,’ which is really what it is.”

House Speaker Mike Johnson similarly insisted shortly after the initial strikes that the country was “not at war,” describing the campaign instead as “a very specific, clear mission.” Democrats have rejected that characterization and repeatedly tried to force votes requiring congressional authorization for continued hostilities. Those efforts have failed largely along party lines. The dispute has revived a decades-old argument over presidential war powers and the extent to which a president can sustain military operations abroad without explicit approval from Congress.

Economic and military pressure

Vance said Thursday that the administration would not rely on Iran to negotiate in good faith and would instead use whatever tools it considered necessary to prevent Iran from obtaining a nuclear weapon and to protect global energy markets.

He argued that Iran’s grip on the Strait of Hormuz was “effectively gone” and that oil traffic through the crucial waterway was nearing its pre-conflict level. Shipping data, however, shows traffic remains well below where it stood before the fighting began. The Administration has made restoring commercial traffic through the strait a central objective as energy prices have become an increasing political liability ahead of the midterms.

Vance acknowledged the pain of higher gasoline prices but argued that they could have risen substantially more without American intervention in Iran. “Gas, frankly, could have been much, much higher were it not for our efforts,” he said. He declined to predict when prices might return to around $3 a gallon, saying the more important objective was ensuring “that Iran doesn’t have a nuclear weapon.”

The Administration is now pursuing what amounts to a strategy of intermittent military force combined with sustained economic pressure. Last week, it announced “Operation Economic Outcast,” an effort to further isolate Iran from its remaining trading partners. But the campaign has so far produced limited results, and imposing sanctions aggressive enough to cripple Iranian trade could require confronting countries including China, India, and Russia.

Secretary of State Marco Rubio said this week that the Administration expected the principal pressure on Iran going forward to be economic, while reserving the right to use military force when necessary.

Iranian uprising

Trump himself has resumed publicly encouraged Iranians to challenge the regime, writing on Truth Social on Tuesday, “When are the Iranian people going to rise up and fight?”

When asked by TIME on Thursday whether the Trump Administration was considering arming Iranian dissidents or providing them with other direct assistance, Vance declined to provide more details. “Everything that could happen is on the table: economic pressure, military pressure, diplomatic pressure, covert pressure,” he said. “Of course, these are tools in the President's toolkit.”

Iranian leaders, meanwhile, have shown little sign of capitulating. Its leadership remains divided between officials advocating negotiations and hard-liners pressing for confrontation, and Tehran has continued striking American interests and allies in response to U.S. attacks.

The renewed American bombing has also brought fresh scrutiny of civilian casualties. Iranian authorities said a U.S. strike this week hit a wedding celebration in Sirik in southern Iran, killing at least five people and wounding scores more, including women and children. A New York Times visual analysis and a weapons expert concluded that the wedding was struck by a bomb released by American forces during attacks in the area.

Vance said the episode was under investigation but expressed deep skepticism about Iran’s account. “The Iranian state media has not been a very good scribe about what’s happened in the conflict thus far,” he said. “So I’m extremely skeptical of this.”

“Obviously, sometimes things happen,” he added. “When our military makes mistakes, they learn from them to try to get better from them, so we’re investigating it very fully.”