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US Vice President JD Vance has said he would not describe the ongoing conflict with Iran as a war, despite continued clashes six months after the start of hostilities.
“I wouldn’t call it a war. Right now, there is no active shooting,” Vance told a White House briefing on Thursday when asked whether the conflict would end before the US midterm elections in November.
Vance acknowledged that “there have been places where this has flared up” but said major combat operations lasted only six weeks after the US-Israel war began on February 28.
The vice president insisted that Washington would not reopen talks with Tehran until it ended attacks on commercial shipping.
He also claimed that Iran’s control over the strategic Strait of Hormuz had been effectively broken.
“Their control over the Strait of Hormuz is effectively gone,” Vance said.
He added that oil flows through the waterway were “almost back to where it was before the conflict even started.”
Iran pressed on with fresh attacks on Thursday, saying it hit US military bases in Kuwait and the United Arab Emirates to avenge a strike on a wedding that it blamed on Washington.
Vance said the United States was investigating the wedding strike but cast doubt on Iranian reporting of the incident.
“I know that we’re investigating,” Vance said.
“I will say that the Iranian state media has not been a very good scribe about what’s happened in the conflict thus far. So I’m extremely skeptical of this.”
The Iranian Red Crescent said the missile attack on the wedding in the Iranian coastal town of Kuhestak killed four people late Tuesday, including a child, and wounded more than 50.
