BBC:
United States Vice President JD Vance has declined to offer a prospective timeline for the end of the US-Israeli war on Iran, which remains a source of surging global energy prices and unpopularity at home.
Vance sought to downplay the fallout from the war in a White House news briefing on Thursday. He even questioned how to refer to the conflict.
“I wouldn’t call it a war. Right now, there is no active shooting,” Vance said, before clarifying. “I recognise there have been places where this has flared up.”
His remarks come after days of intense fire between the US and Iran. Still, Vance argued that major combat operations only lasted “about six weeks” and that the US has succeeded in degrading Iran’s defence production capabilities.
He also sought to turn attention to the Strait of Hormuz, a focal point of the war, accusing Iran of preventing the flow of traffic through the vital trade route.
“When you ask, ‘When will this end?’, you’re asking me a question like: When will the Iranians stop shooting at ships?” Vance told reporters.
“I think the reality is, I don’t know the answer to that question. You’d have to ask the Iranians.”
Prior to the outbreak of war on February 28, traffic flowed freely through the strait. But after the US and Israel launched an initial volley of attacks that month, Iran closed the waterway to commercial vessels, in a blow to the global fossil fuel trade.
Roughly a fifth of the world’s oil and gas flowed through the Strait of Hormuz prior to the war.
