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At a press conference on Monday, Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth repeatedly contradicted President Donald Trump’s claims about the U.S. and Israel’s war on Iran, and vowed that the war would not be bound by “stupid rules of engagement.”
During the press briefing, Hegseth attacked members of the media, as well as critics of the war, for comparing the U.S.’s current operation — which has killed hundreds of people in just two days — to its war in Iraq two decades ago.
“To the media outlets and political left screaming ‘endless wars,’ stop,” Hegseth demanded. “This is not Iraq. This is not endless. Our generation knows better and so does this president.”
Despite claiming the war on Iran — which the U.S. has waged since Saturday without authorization from Congress — would not be endless, Hegseth belittled journalists at the presser for asking how long the war would last.
When asked about Trump’s remarks indicating that the war could last weeks, Hegseth blasted the question as a “typical NBC gotcha-type” query, before launching into a non-sequitur complaint regarding Trump’s predecessor, former President Joe Biden.
Hegseth was similarly hostile when asked about the potential of U.S. ground troops entering Iran, a thought that is likely on the minds of millions of Americans as the U.S. and Israel continue their bombardment of the country.
“Why in the world would we tell you, you, the enemy, anybody, what we will or will not do in pursuit of an objective?” Hegseth said.
Hegseth also whined that the U.S.’s “traditional allies” had criticized the attacks so far, saying they are “clutch[ing] their pearls” about the operation and that the war is happening “on our terms,” with “no stupid rules of engagement” holding the administration back.
“‘No stupid rules of engagement’ means no Geneva Conventions or other international humanitarian laws, which the U.S. signed and supported for more than a century,” author and journalist Mark Jacob opined in response. “Hegseth and Trump are pro-war crimes.”
Hegseth suggested that the war’s primary objectives were to “destroy the missile threats” and to end Iran’s supposed ambitions for a nuclear weapon. But the administration has admitted to members of Congress that neither of those purported threats were imminent when they launched their attacks.
Even Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas), a Trump ally who supports the war, has said that he’s never been presented with evidence that a nuclear weapon in Iran was close to being realized.
“I don’t have present-day intelligence on what progress they had made toward rebuilding nuclear weapons since we bombed their facilities [last year],” Cruz said on CBS News’s “Face the Nation” on Sunday.
Hegseth also claimed that “Iran was building powerful missiles and drones to create a conventional shield for their nuclear blackmail ambitions,” and that the country “had a conventional gun to our head as they tried to lie their way to a nuclear bomb.”
“The president has been willing to make a deal. [Iran] can’t have a nuclear bomb. … He gave them every single opportunity” to agree not to pursue the technology, Hegseth said.
Notably, the U.S. and Israel’s attacks came in the middle of indirect negotiations with Iran on the country’s nuclear program, in which Iranian officials openly stated that they never plan to possess a nuclear weapon.
“Our fundamental convictions are crystal clear: Iran will under no circumstances ever develop a nuclear weapon,” Iran’s foreign minister Seyed Abbas Araghchi said last week, adding that the country is instead in pursuit of nuclear energy sources.
Hegseth also falsely claimed that the administration was not in pursuit of regime change in Iran.
“This is not a regime change war,” Hegseth said, although he admitted, following the U.S.’s killing of Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, that “the regime sure did change.”
Members of the Trump administration — including Trump himself — have made comments before and after the attacks saying that Iran’s leadership should be replaced.
“I call upon all Iranian patriots who yearn for freedom to seize this moment … and take back your country,” Trump said in a video message to Iranians on Saturday after the attacks began.
Trump has similarly contradicted himself when discussing the strategy and purpose of the war, Economist journalist Gregg Carlstrom has pointed out: Despite Hegseth’s claims that the purpose of the war was to prevent Iran from developing nuclear weapons, Trump told The Washington Post that the goal of the war was to bring “freedom for the people” in Iran. Although Trump told Axiosthat the war could end within “two or three days,” he later told The New York Times that it might be “four to five weeks” long. And although Trump told theTimes that he had “three very good choices” for who could run Iran, he later admitted to ABC News that those candidates had been killed by U.S. bombings.
“Ultimately, I suspect he just wants to say he ‘solved’ a problem that has vexed every American president since Jimmy Carter. But there’s no clear idea what that looks like and no plan for how to get there,” Carlstrom said on X. “And there are plenty of possible scenarios in which Trump declares victory and leaves the region with an absolute mess.”
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