Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth and Gen. Dan Caine, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, offered on Thursday the Trump administration’s most detailed descriptions yet of the planning and execution of U.S. airstrikes on Iranian nuclear facilities.
But Mr. Hegseth and General Caine offered no new assessments of the state of Iran’s nuclear program or the damage to the sites. Both men referred those questions to the nation’s spy agencies.
Neither man repeated President Trump’s assertion that the strikes had “obliterated” the Iranian facilities, even as they pushed back against a preliminary classified Defense Intelligence Agency report that said the bombings set back the country’s nuclear program by only a few months.
Mr. Hegseth began what was only his second ever news conference at the Pentagon by saying that the news media, in his view, had not been kind to Mr. Trump. “Searching for scandals, you miss historic moments like recruiting at the Pentagon, historic levels in the Army, the Air Force and the Navy.”
Mr. Hegseth has fashioned himself as an amplifier of Mr. Trump, as part of his role as defense secretary.
General Caine played videos of the bombing attack on the nuclear sites and described how they were carried out. He steered clear of Mr. Hegseth’s political points, and instead focused on the personnel who developed the 30,000-pound bombs that the B-2’s dropped, the bomber crew members who flew the 37-hour-round-trip mission, and the troops who defended a major American base from Iranian retaliation.
General Caine said only two Patriot missile defense batteries remained at Al Udeid Air Base in Qatar when Iran retaliated for American strikes with a missile barrage on Monday. The oldest American soldier on the base was a 28-year-old captain, he said, and the youngest was 21. He painted a portrait of tension on the base, in an almost lyrical way.
“At 7:30 p.m. in Qatar, as the sun sets in the west, Iran attacks,” he said.
Asked later if he had been pressured to provide a rosy assessment of the mission, General Caine, an F-16 pilot, said: “No, I have not, and no, I would not.”
Eric Schmitt is a national security correspondent for The Times. He has reported on U.S. military affairs and counterterrorism for more than three decades.
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