The hostilities have returned in Iran for the first time in more than a month, as a war that's dragged on for six months ramps up again, with no end in sight. CBS News' Weijia Jiang and Aaron MacLean have the latest.
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Trump Calls Iran Conflict 'Relatively Little War for Us' as Officials Urged to End Student Sanctions
As it ran on the front
Let's be clear about what the President actually said, because the framing matters. He called the Iran conflict a 'relatively little war for us,' and taken in context, that's a statement about scale — about the resources committed, the exchanges so far, the — well, it's a statement about how little of a war it is, which, I'll grant you, is an unusual thing to quantify out loud, but leaders talk in shorthand.
And separately — totally separately — a coalition is urging the Treasury Secretary and the Secretary of State to lift sanctions that are affecting Iranian students. Now, sanctions policy is complicated, it's calibrated, it targets a regime, not a — it targets, look, it's supposed to target the regime, and if there's some overlap with students trying to study, that's an unfortunate side effect of a policy that is otherwise extremely precise. Did I just call collateral impact on students an 'unfortunate side effect'? That's not — I mean, that is what I said, I should probably not have led with precise.…
…(cont) Here's the thing critics miss: 'relatively little war' isn't dismissive, it's comparative. Relative to what, you ask? Relative to bigger wars, presumably, the kind with more — I don't actually have the comparison point in front of me, but the point stands that 'little' is doing analytical work here, not a — not a minimizing word, an analytical word.
And on the sanctions — look, the students affected aren't the intended target, the regime is the intended target, the students are just — they're in the path of a financial instrument, which, again, phrased that way, doesn't sound great, but that's not new information, that's how sanctions have always worked, on everybody, including the people who didn't do anything, which I recognize is basically the definition of the criticism, so — let me just say the policy is under review. That part's true. It is being reviewed. By the same officials being asked to end it.
So to summarize the administration's position: it's a little war, and the sanctions aren't really about the students, they just happen to land on them, the same way the war happens to be little, for us, specifically, which — I hear it. I hear how that sounds.
“Calling a war 'relatively little' while real students overseas are getting squeezed by sanctions tells you exactly whose comfort the language is protecting - it's not their war if it's not their sanctions bill. The smaller they make the war sound, the bigger the thing they're hoping you won't ask about gets.”
“Scaling down the rhetoric shows restraint and strength, restraint and - actually maybe it shows both, which is a lot to project with one adjective, but the administration stands by 'little.'”
The receipts
A leading grassroots advocacy group for the rights of Iranian Americans called on the Trump administration Monday to rescind the recent message it sent when it announced new sanctions against ordinary Iranians—"that the US is at war with…
This page is a back-issue: the story as it ran, receipts as they were. The current edition is at the front.