President Donald Trump said Friday that the conflict in Iran amounts to “small potatoes” as he defended Vice President JD Vance’s assertion that months of intermittent attacks in the Middle East do not constitute a “war.”

Speaking to reporters in an Oval Office exchange about Vance’s comments a day earlier, Trump said U.S. strikes on Iran are now “intermittent” and that “a lot of people don’t call it a war.” The conflict has so far cost U.S. taxpayers more than $37.5 billion and left 18 U.S. service members dead. The framing of the conflict’s label carries practical weight beyond rhetoric: under the U.S. Constitution, Congress holds the power to declare war, and the 1973 War Powers Resolution requires the president to notify Congress within 48 hours of introducing armed forces into hostilities and withdraw them within 60 days absent congressional authorization. How an administration characterizes a conflict has historically been central to debates over those limits.

“I can understand what he’s saying,” Trump said, adding: “I call it a military conflict because it’s small potatoes for us. It’s not a big thing.”

At a White House press briefing Thursday, Vance rejected describing the U.S. fighting with Iran as a war and avoided predicting that the six-month-old conflict would end before November’s midterm elections, in which Republicans are working to hold their narrow majorities in Congress. Prolonged overseas conflicts have historically weighed on the party in power ahead of national elections, and the Nov. 3 balloting falls more than a month past the six-month mark of the fighting, which began Feb. 28.

“I wouldn’t call it a war,” Vance said when asked whether the fighting could conclude before voters cast their ballots in the Nov. 3 elections. “Right now, there is no active shooting.”

His remarks came even as Iran fired on U.S. Gulf ally Kuwait on Thursday, in retaliation for rounds of U.S. strikes on Iran earlier in the week. The strike on Kuwait marked an expansion of the confrontation beyond the direct U.S.–Iran exchange, drawing a Gulf state that hosts U.S. military forces into the line of fire.

Trump, in his Friday exchange with reporters, also noted that the U.S. death toll in the Iran conflict is relatively low compared with other recent American wars. The United States and Israel have relied solely on air strikes in the Iran war, which began Feb. 28, and have not deployed troops into the country. An air-only campaign without ground forces is a key factor in the comparatively low casualty count, a pattern consistent with prior U.S. air campaigns.

“We did Venezuela and we did this. In Venezuela, we lost nobody,” Trump said, referring to the January U.S. military operation to seize former Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro and transport him to New York City to face federal drug trafficking charges. “And this, we lost 18 people. And, in Vietnam we lost 100,000 people. And in other conflicts, we lost tens of thousands of people.”

According to records from the U.S. National Archives, a total of 58,220 members of the U.S. armed forces died during the Vietnam War.

When a reporter pressed Trump on characterizing the conflict as “small potatoes” given that 18 U.S. service members have been killed, the president reiterated his argument that the conflict — which he said at the outset would last only a matter of weeks — has led to the defanging of Iran’s nuclear program. Whether Iran’s nuclear program has in fact been neutralized has been the subject of competing assessments since the campaign began, though Trump on Friday offered no new evidence beyond his assertion.

“Iran will not have a nuclear weapon because if they did you probably wouldn’t be standing here,” Trump said.

This story was originally featured on Fortune.com