Trump Calls the Iran War 'Small Potatoes.' It Has Killed 18 U.S. Troops.

The president also said the United States may soon strike Pickaxe, an underground site where Iran is believed to hold enriched uranium.

President Donald Trump played down the six-month conflict with Iran on Friday, September 4, 2026, calling it a small matter for the United States. The fighting has killed 18 American service members, injured hundreds more and helped push up gas prices, CNN reported from the Oval Office. He said he doesn't think the word war fits.

Eighteen American families and hundreds of wounded service members are on the other side of that arithmetic, along with every driver who paid the higher pump price while the strikes ran.

“A lot of people don’t call it a war. I call it a military conflict because it’s small potatoes for us,” Trump said, according to CNN. Vice President JD Vance had made a version of the same argument a day earlier, saying the label doesn't apply because major combat operations ended months ago, the outlet reported.

Set the claim next to the week's record. The United States said it had hit close to 60 military targets around the Strait of Hormuz — among them radar systems, air defenses, mine-laying capability, maritime assets and communications sites — while American forces escorted ships through the same waterway, CNN reported. Trump described the campaign as intermittent and said there isn't fighting right now.

The administration had signaled a turn away from strikes and toward money, squeezing Iran by sanctioning the countries that trade with it. It hasn't sanctioned China, which the outlet described as Tehran's largest economic lifeline. Trump said Beijing is barely involved and could be doing far more.

He's hosting Chinese President Xi Jinping for a state visit this month.

Trump also raised the possibility of a new operation against a suspected Iranian nuclear site south of Tehran, an underground facility he called Pickaxe, where Iran is believed to have moved part of its stockpile of highly enriched uranium.

“We may hit Pickaxe very soon,” he said, per CNN. He didn't attach a timetable to it.

The president spent part of the same appearance selling the future of oil routes that would go around the Strait of Hormuz altogether, including an overland pipeline through Syria, and predicted the strait itself would stop mattering. Then he returned to the vocabulary fight, saying the name doesn't matter and that the results have been a success.

What the record shows is a six-month conflict with a casualty count, an active target list and a possible strike on a nuclear site still ahead. The next scheduled event on the calendar isn't in Iran. It's the Xi state visit, this month, with the sanctions question on China still unanswered.

Source: cnn.com, retrieved September 6, 2026.