Iran war news LIVE Updates: Trump calls conflict ‘small potatoes,’ threatens Pickaxe Mountain strike 'very soon'

Iran war news LIVE Updates: US President Donald Trump called the war with Iran “small potatoes”, saying just 18 Americans had been killed compared with 100,000 in Vietnam. The comments come a day after Vice President JD Vance said he would not describe the armed hostilities as a “war” given that major combat operations ended months ago. Asked Friday about those remarks, Trump concurred.“ I call it a military conflict because it’s small potatoes for us.

It’s not a big thing,” Trump said. “You know, we do intermittent strikes. So I heard what he said, and it was interesting because I think that there’s a lot of truth that we’re not fighting right now,” Trump said.' We lost 18 great souls'Trump again compared the death toll of 18 US service members to the wars in Vietnam and Afghanistan, which lasted years and led to the deaths of tens of thousands of American troops, though he acknowledged “we lost 18 great souls.”“

One is too much. But in Vietnam, we lost tens of thousands of people. In Afghanistan, we lost a lot,” he said. “What we’ve done is amazing. We took over Venezuela, and we have essentially taken over Iran.” US attack on Pickaxe MountainThe US may hit Iran's Pickaxe Mountain very soon, President Donald Trump told reporters on Friday. The mountain, located near Iran's heavily damaged Natanz uranium enrichment facility, is a heavily fortified site that hosts two deeply buried tunnel complexes.Speaking to reporters at the Oval Office, Trump defended the months-long US military campaign against the Islamic Republic, saying its primary objective was to prevent Tehran from acquiring a nuclear weapon."

We're in five months now. And you know what we did in five months? They're not going to have a nuclear weapon; that's what we did," Trump said. "Iran will not have a nuclear weapon because if they did, you probably wouldn't be standing here very long," he added.Trump then warned that Pickaxe Mountain could be targeted if the US detects activity there." We may hit Pickaxe very soon because if there was anything going on with Pickaxe," Trump said, adding that US intelligence was closely monitoring activity at the site."

We know everybody that's moving at Pickaxe; we know everybody that's moving everywhere all over Iran. And if anything goes bad, we hit them; we hit them hard," Trump said.Stay tuned to this LIVE blog for all the latest news on the US-Iran war news.