Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth lashed into the Pentagon press corps Thursday morning, accusing reporters of deliberately trying to cast doubt on the success of last weekend’s U.S. airstrikes against Iranian nuclear sites in aid of what he painted as an underlying vendetta against President Donald Trump.
“You cheer against Trump so hard, it's like in your DNA and in your blood to cheer against Trump,” he scolded in an early morning briefing scheduled after Trump himself raged for the better part of 24 hours — including publicly at a NATO summit in the Netherlands — about a CNN report on leaked early assessments of the damage caused by Saturday’s B-2 bomber strikes against Iran.
“Because you want him not to be successful so bad, you have to cheer against the efficacy of these strikes,” the former Fox News weekend host said as he lambasted the assembled press.
Speaking alongside the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff in the Pentagon briefing room, Hegseth laid into the assembled reporters from the start by grousing about how news outlets hadn’t given Trump enough credit for NATO members’ decision to increase defense spending to an annual 5 percent of GDP at this week’s summit in The Hague.
He also accused the press of missing “historic moments” while trying to “find wedges and spin stories” before claiming the airstrikes aimed at Iran’s Esfahan, Fordow and Natanz nuclear sites on Saturday had been “the most complex and secretive military operation in history” and “a resounding success.”
“You have to hope maybe they weren't effective, maybe the way the Trump administration is representing them isn't true. So let's take half-truths, spun information, leaked information, and then spin it, spin it in every way we can, to try to cause doubt and manipulate the mind, the public mind over whether or not our brave pilots were successful,” Hegseth raged.
The airstrikes, which were conducted by seven B-2 Spirit bomber aircraft with the aid of numerous fighters and an Ohio-class guided missile submarine that fired dozens of Tomahawk Land Attack Missiles at one of the target sites, appear to have inflicted significant damage on the sites.
But Hegseth and Trump have become increasingly irate over press coverage of the action because of media reporting in the last few days over a preliminary report stating that the damage to the underground Fordow site wasn’t enough to match their claims to have “obliterated” the facilities.
According to satellite photos taken following the strikes, the U.S. action appears to have caused visible damage on the ground, including new craters, holes in mountain ridges and collapsed tunnels. However, they did not reveal definitive proof that the heavily fortified underground facilities were breached by the American munitions.
A Defense Intelligence Agency assessment first reported by CNN stated that the bombing succeeded in sealing off the entrances to two of the facilities but did not collapse the underground buildings. The damage to facilities is understood to have set Iran’s nuclear program back by at least six months at minimum — contrary to claims by Trump and Hegseth that Tehran’s progress had been “obliterated.”
Hegseth complained that the press had reported on the preliminary document and cited other more recent statements from some of Trump’s political appointees which assessed that the strikes had “severely damaged” Iran’s nuclear program before returning to attacking journalists and accusing them of wanting the military to fail because it would look bad for Trump.
Hegseth’s combative demeanor Thursday matched the performative outrage he displayed alongside Trump less than a day before, when he called the bombing mission “flawless” and said the 30,000-pound Massive Ordnance Penetrator weapons dropped onto the hardened Fordow site had created “devastation underneath” before attacking the motives of the Defense Intelligence Agency analysts who’d written the intelligence assessment.
That posturing appeared to find favor with Trump, who posted on Truth Social that the briefing was “one of the greatest, most professional, and most ‘confirming’ News Conferences” he’d ever seen and said the news outlets that reported on the DIA assessment should “fire everyone involved.”
But what he and Joint Chiefs chair Gen. Dan Caine did not provide during the combative session with reporters was any information on whether the U.S. knows the location of the enriched uranium that was previously thought to be stored at Fordow.
Several reporters asked him about the uranium, which is feared to have been moved from the facility in trucks seen in satellite photos in the days leading up to the airstrikes.
“We're looking at all aspects of intelligence and making sure we have a sense of what was where,” he said.
When pressed further, Hegseth said: “I'm not aware of any intelligence that I've reviewed that says things were not where they were supposed to be moved or otherwise.”
He also claimed that “anyone with two eyes” could see the MOP munitions dropped onto Fordow and another target site would have had a “devastating effect.”
For his part Caine, said the bunker-buster bombs “went exactly where they were intended to go” and pointed out that the weapons don’t leave a traditional impact crater “because they're designed to deeply bury and then function.” But when reporters asked him to sign on to the bombastic descriptions of the damage used by Trump and Hegseth, the Air Force general demurred, citing a policy that the Joint Staff does not conduct battle damage assessments because that would be “grading our own homework.”
Instead, he vouched only for the accuracy of the weapons and the skill with which they were wielded.
“I know there's been a lot of questions about that all six weapons at each vent at Fordow went exactly where they were intended to go,” he said.
He explained how two American officers had spent 15 years working in the Defense Threat Reduction Agency to gather intelligence on Iran’s nuclear facilities that was put to use in the airstrikes on Saturday.
According to the general, the pair spent years watching Iran build the facilities, watching all the equipment going in, and working out what they were for. They also helped develop the bunker busting bombs used to destroy the facilities, including one at Fordow.
“Operation Midnight Hammer was the culmination of those 15 years of incredible work,” he said.
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