Welcome to The Hill's Defense & NatSec newsletter {beacon} View Online Defense &National Security Defense &National Security The Big Story Vance 'extremely skeptical' of Iran wedding attack reports Vice President Vance said on Thursday that he is “extremely skeptical” of the reports that a U.S. missile struck a home in southern Iran…
Page B1From§Eachthe sunrise edition — 4 September 2026
THE EUPHEMISM
Vance declines to call it a war, so Trump names three more countries for it.
As it ran on the front
Operation Epic Fury died this week, quietly, the way these names always go, retired by the Pentagon without a service. It was young. It survived Iran, Kuwait, and the United Arab Emirates, and, by the end, Great Britain and Canada too — the guest list a name like that leaves behind once nobody is allowed to write down what it was for.
The Pentagon buried the name; nobody buried the war. On September 1st, with U.S. strikes resumed against Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps targets, the president promised Iran it would be "hit much harder" if it retaliated, then upgraded that on Truth Social to the "biggest attack of them all" — a phrase with no operation name attached to it, because it didn't need one anymore. Two days later, standing in for a press secretary who had already left, the vice president took the podium and, asked what to call seven months of exactly this, said he wouldn't call it a war. He was also "extremely skeptical" of reports that one of those unnamed strikes had hit a wedding party in southern Iran — bunk dressed as caution, the last job left to a word once its noun is gone.…
…(cont) The list did not stop at Iran. On August 30th, with a trade war of its own underway, the president called Canada's leaders "the worst" of any country he'd dealt with. Days later, on Thursday, he added Britain to the same ledger, diagnosing the country a "tipping point" over its immigration policy and its energy prices — a country not shooting at anyone, filed anyway, because the vocabulary that used to sort friend from target had already been retired along with the operation name.
War is survived by seven months of it, by two governments that will not use the word for what is being done to them, and by a vice president whose newest job is finding synonyms for a briefing room. It is preceded in death by every operation name before it, each one buried the same way: quietly, so the thing itself could keep going under no name at all.
In lieu of flowers, the family asks that the next name given to any of this be the true one.
“They didn't lose the word "war" — they retired it, same as they retired "Epic Fury," because a war has a name you can total the cost against and a target list doesn't. Vance gets to be "extremely skeptical" about a wedding party in Iran because nobody in that room has to say the word that would make him answer for it. Britain, Canada, Iran — three names on one ledger, and nobody's saying whose money is paying for the list to keep growing.”
“Look, calling it a "war" is needlessly alarmist — the Vice President is just being precise, and precision is what people say they want until they get it. The "biggest attack of them all" line, sure, that's tough talk, but tough talk is a deterrent, that's just — okay, deterrent against a country we're currently bombing. Did I say that? Doesn't sound like me.”
The receipts
President Donald Trump on Tuesday issued yet another unhinged threat to commit mass murder as the US military restarted its illegal bombing campaign against Iran. In a Truth Social post , the president warned Iran against striking back at the US shortly after American forces began bombing Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) targets…
With the war in Iran now entering its seventh month and attacks escalating, Vice Pres. JD Vance said he "wouldn't call it a war."
President Donald Trump issued a stark warning to Iran on Tuesday, saying if the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps retaliated in response to U.S. Central Command’s Tuesday strikes, the country would be “hit much harder.” “If they retaliate, they’ll be hit much harder.
Iran responded to a warning from President Trump with claims of new strikes against U.S. forces in Kuwait and the United Arab Emirates.
Vice President JD Vance took the podium in the press room on Thursday, holding a rare briefing following last week's departure of White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt. Vance downplayed the war with Iran, saying he wouldn't even call it a war. Weijia Jiang reports.
President Donald Trump warned that Great Britain was at a “tipping point” on Thursday, specifically citing the country’s current immigration policies and looming energy crisis. Trump made the remarks during an exclusive interview with Bev Turner on GB News’s “The Late Show Live”
President Donald Trump further ripped into Canada as the U.S. trade war with the country escalates, trashing its leadership as the “worst” of all countries he’s dealt with. While Trump’s insults against Canada are nothing new, his…
This page is a back-issue: the story as it ran, receipts as they were. The current edition is at the front.