India, March 2 -- The Middle East is burning, scores are dead, and missiles are crossing borders with alarming frequency - yet from the White House, the language remains restrained.

As US airstrikes hammer Iran and the conflict spills across West Asia, President Donald Trump continues to describe the unfolding violence not as a war, but as "major combat operations".

The distinction is not rhetorical carelessness - it is deliberate, calculated, and rooted in law.

Trump returned to office branding himself as the "candidate of peace", a leader who promised to end wars rather than ignite new ones.

Throughout the 2024 campaign, he cast himself as the corrective to the conflicts that erupted under his Democratic predecessors, pledging to ha...