Vice President JD Vance on Thursday declined to set a deadline for the end of the Iran war or to predict that it would be over in time for the midterms, saying that to publicly project the Trump administration's timeline for ending the conflict would undercut the military effort.

"It would be irresponsible for us to write out our strategy and our timeline," he told reporters, during the White House press briefing.

"When you ask 'when will this end?' you're asking me a question like 'when will the Iranians stop shooting at ships?' I don't know the answer to that question," he added. "We have the responsibility... to ensure that the Iranians are not destroying world energy markets and our attitude is we're not going to set an artifical timeline."

He then presented a hypothetical in which he offered a specific end date for the conflict that the Iranians would then violate, leaving the U.S. with egg on its face.

He also declined to call the conflict a "war," saying "right now, there is no active shooting... major combat operations lasted for about six weeks."

The vice president previously led negotiations in Pakistan that culminated in a now-abandoned Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) between Washington and Tehran.

Ben Whedon is the Chief Political Correspondent for Just the News. Follow him on X.