From his lectern in the Pentagon, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth was speaking on Sunday to two very different audiences.
His message to Iran’s leaders just hours after the U.S. strikes was clear: He wanted them to understand that the U.S. military’s power is vast and overwhelming. Mr. Hegseth described its capabilities as “nearly unlimited.”
At the same time, he was trying to convey a somewhat contradictory message to the American people and President Trump’s base, who remain deeply skeptical of an open-ended war in the Middle East.
“The scope of this was intentionally limited,” Mr. Hegseth insisted Sunday, in his first news conference in five months as defense secretary.
The U.S. attack on Iran’s three main nuclear sites employed 125 aircraft and 75 precision-guided bombs. The main focus was seven B-2 stealth bombers that carried 30,000–pound GBU-57 Massive Ordnance Penetrators designed to destroy Iran’s deeply buried nuclear site at Fordo.
In his remarks, Mr. Hegseth drew special attention to the American military’s vast reach. The B-2 bombers had flown 18 hours from Whiteman Air Force Base in Missouri.
“I think Tehran is certainly calculating the reality that planes flew from the middle of America and Missouri overnight, completely undetected,” Mr. Hegseth said.
He and Gen. Dan Caine, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, emphasized the mission’s secrecy and stealth. Earlier this year, Mr. Hegseth was criticized for sharing detailed information about forthcoming strikes in Yemen in two private Signal group chats.
“This was a highly classified mission with very few people in Washington knowing the timing or nature of this plan,” General Caine said.
They had gone “in and out and back without the world knowing at all,” Mr. Hegseth said of the Air Force’s pilots and planes.
Mr. Hegseth also praised Mr. Trump’s boldness in authorizing the strike. “Many presidents have dreamed of delivering the final blow to Iran’s nuclear program, and none could, until President Trump,” Mr. Hegseth boasted.
The challenge for Mr. Hegseth and Mr. Trump is that little about the U.S. attack on Iran’s nuclear sites seems final. Iran could respond by attacking U.S. troops and American allies in the region in an effort to draw Mr. Trump into an extended conflict.
And Iran’s leaders seem likely to try to rebuild their nuclear program. General Caine said that the initial battle damage assessment indicated that all three sites had sustained “severe damage and destruction,” but that a final assessment would take time.
Those facts put Mr. Hegseth in the awkward position of acknowledging the limits of American military power and the American people’s appetite for another conflict in the Middle East.
Mr. Hegseth served in both Iraq and Afghanistan — two wars that dragged on for years longer than military planners had anticipated, costing more than $1 trillion and taking the lives of more than 6,200 service members.
“Are you prepared for a protracted war?” one reporter asked him.
“Well, anything can happen in conflict, we acknowledge that,” Mr. Hegseth said. “But the scope of this was intentionally limited. That’s the message that we’re sending. With the capabilities of the American military nearly unlimited.”
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