Pete Hegseth Gets Irritated As Reporters Press Him On Iran War - Deadline

Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth‘s irritation with the media was on full display on Monday as he and General Dan Caine, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, gave a press conference to outline the rationale and objectives for the U.S. joining Israel in striking Iran.

After delivering remarks at the opining of the press conference, Hegseth and Caine took questions for about 12 minutes. Toward the end of the Q&A, NewsNation’s Kellie Meyer asked Hegseth, “Is there a concern of this spiraling into a longer war?”

“Did you not hear my remarks?” Hegseth said to her. “We’re ensuring the mission gets accomplished, but we are very clear eyed, as the president had been, unlike other presidents, about the foolish policies of the past that recklessly pulled us in to things that were not tethered to actual, clear objectives. We have plans, we have chairmen, we have CENTCOM commanders, Admiral Cooper, who’s executing very deliberately to ensure outcomes that I laid out are accomplished. But we would never in front of a press pool.”

When it came to objectives, Hegseth spoke of ensuring that Iran could not use a “conventional umbrella to continue a pursuit of nuclear ambitions.” He had spoken of Iran building up a conventional arsenal “to ensure that no one would ever block them from their ability to get nuclear weapons.”

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“So we’re very clear eyed about the nature of this Iranian threat, and we are going to get after it,” he said.

An NBC News correspondent attempted to ask a question, noting that Trump had put a four-week timeline on the war. Hegseth had been vague about how long the U.S. military action would last, telling reporters that he did not want to disclose such information to the press or the enemy.

“I heard the question about four weeks. It’s the typical NBC gotcha type questions. President Trump has all the latitude in the world to talk about how long it may or may not take — four weeks, two weeks, six weeks. It could move up. It could move back. We’re going to executive at his command the objectives we’ve set out to achieve.”

Trump has not held a press conference after the start of the war, but he spoke by phone to a number of major media correspondents on Saturday and Sunday.

Hegseth instituted a new policy that led to most of the traditional news media given up their Pentagon press credentials, with their spaces ceded to more Trump friendly and other news outlets on the right. Reporters can still access the facility but on more limited visitor passes.

That said, even outlets on the right had questions about the endgame. Reagan Reese, correspondent for the Daily Caller, asked, “The president said yesterday in his video message that we will leave Iran when we complete all of our objectives. What are our objectives?”

“Well, I laid out the objectives, as did the chairman,” Hegseth said. “Iran has an ability to project power against us and our allies in a ways that we can’t tolerate. So whether that’s ballistic missiles and drones, offensive capabilities, effectively their Navy, which would attempt to set other terms and impose different costs. Drone capabilities, which we laid out there. And ultimately, though, tying it back to Midnight Hammer [the strikes last year] the president has been willing to make a deal. You can’t have a nuclear bomb. Radical Islamist can’t have a nuclear bomb that they wield against the world.”

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- David R How about laying out your plan for Anerican soldiers and their families before you send them off to fight and possibly die? Or is that too much to ask, Mr. all-powerful “Secretary of War”?

Barring that, just to show the American public that everyone has skin in this game, let’s see Barron Trump enlist for duty immediately. Or is that just for us working-class folks?