Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth saw nothing but positives in President Donald Trump’s surprise attack on Iran.
In a Sunday morning news conference, former Fox News man and current head of the Pentagon said that Trump’s strikes on Iranian nuclear facilities were “bold and brilliant.”
“The order we received from our commander-in-chief was focused, it was powerful, and it was clear,” Hegseth said. “Thanks to President Trump’s bold and visionary leadership and his commitment to peace through strength, Iran’s nuclear ambitions have been obliterated.”
U.S. intelligence has repeatedly and consistently claimed that Iran was not moving forward on the development of a nuclear weapon. Earlier this year, Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard testified to Congress that “Iran is not building a nuclear weapon.” Gabbard walked back those statements as Trump saber-rattled his way into the Israel-Iran conflict. Gabbard’s new assessment was heavy on hypotheticals, with the spy chief saying Iran could “produce a nuclear weapon within weeks to months, if they decide to finalize the assembly.”
Hegseth paid no mind to the shaky ground he was standing on, trumpeting the bombing campaign as an unqualified success.
“Many presidents have dreamed of delivering the final blow to Iran’s nuclear program, and none could until President Trump. The operation President Trump planned was bold and it was brilliant, showing the world that American deterrence is back,” he said.
Hegseth’s victory lap comes as many members of Trump’s own party are turning on the president’s actions. The bombing of Iran has legislators in the Republican party eyeing the War Powers Act for the first time in this century.
Rep. Thomas Massie, R-Ky., made his opposition plain in a post to X.
“This is not Constitutional,” he wrote.
Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene, R-Ga., spent the days leading up to the attack warning the president away from war. In the wake of the bombings, she said that the conflict was “not our fight.”
“Every time America is on the verge of greatness, we get involved in another foreign war,” she wrote on X. “There would not be bombs falling on the people of Israel if Netanyahu had not dropped bombs on the people of Iran first.”
Watch Hegseth’s remarks below:
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