For a guy who calls himself the Secretary of War, Pete Hegseth sure is defensive.
On Monday morning, in the first public event by a Trump administration official since the U.S. attacks on Iran began two days earlier, Mr. Hegseth was asked what the mission was all about and whether the American people could expect another protracted, blood-soaked war in the Middle East.
“Did you not hear my remarks?” he snapped. “We’re ensuring the mission gets accomplished. But we are very cleareyed, as the president has been, unlike other presidents, about the foolish policies in the past that recklessly pulled us into things that were not tethered to actual, clear objectives.”
That kind of aggressive non-answer has come to define Mr. Hegseth’s engagements with journalists. Four American service members were killed in an Iranian attack over the weekend, and three fighter jets were shot down in “an apparent friendly fire incident” by Kuwaiti forces. And yet outside of short military news releases, the Trump administration has been uncharacteristically quiet about the details of the battle — and why we’re fighting it.
During a Medal of Honor ceremony at the White House, President Trump spoke briefly about Iran and indicated that the U.S.-Israeli military campaign’s timeline was open-ended. “Whatever the time is, it’s OK, whatever it takes,” he said. “Right from the beginning we projected four to five weeks, but we have the capability to go far longer than that. We’ll do it.”
Mr. Trump took no questions from reporters.
The need for security and secrecy is crucial when the lives of America’s service members hang in the balance. The Trump administration’s near silence around the new war in Iran goes beyond such caution. The American public has received too little information to effectively judge the goals and objectives of the largest U.S. military operation in the Middle East in a generation, whatever they turn out to be.
Trump administration officials did not appear on the Sunday morning news shows, a typical venue for public servants to explain and discuss major decisions. Mr. Trump hasn’t fielded questions about it, apart from granting a few short interviews. U.S. Central Command, which oversees military operations in the Middle East, has used its public channels to provide some images and information about Operation Epic Fury, as the mission in Iran is called. The most detailed was a “fact sheet” of the first 48 hours that said “over 1,250” targets were struck and provided a list of the various aircraft, ships and missile defense systems deployed, along with a conspicuous kicker: “and special capabilities we can’t list here!”
Mr. Hegseth’s media briefing at the Pentagon, alongside Gen. Dan Caine, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, provided the American public its first chance to gauge how things were going. And while the officials offered broad contours of the mission and its military goals, they refused to present details, or even basic information, that would help anyone assess the situation.
Mr. Hegseth wouldn’t provide the number of U.S. troops involved. He refused to offer a timeline on how long the mission would last. He didn’t foreclose the chance that a U.S. ground invasion might be necessary. “Why in the world would we tell you, you, the enemy, anybody, what we will or will not do in pursuit of an objective?” he asked. Mr. Hegseth did say there weren’t any troops currently on the ground in Iran, but added, “we’re not going to go into the exercise of what we will or will not do.”
None of this is normal. During wartime, the Defense Department typically gives routine public assessments of a campaign’s progress, even though they’re often much rosier than the facts on the ground. In the multiyear bombardment against the Islamic State, for instance, the military provided regular reports that explained the number of airstrikes conducted, the targets they attempted to hit, and the locations where they took place. All this was accompanied by officials — first in the Obama administration, then the first Trump administration — regularly fielding questions to explain the goals, successes and setbacks of the campaign.
Even when the U.S. military bombed Iran’s underground nuclear facilities in June, Mr. Hegseth and General Caine gave a comprehensive presentation at the Pentagon of the multifaceted mission, called Operation Midnight Hammer, and the intention behind it. Not so in the campaign now unfolding in Iran. During the 41-minute briefing, General Caine did say more than 100 aircraft launched from land and sea, but he didn’t discuss what they hit and when.
Mr. Trump and his cabinet officials have given shifting explanations of their decision to go to war. At first, it was going to be on behalf of Iranian protesters who demonstrated against the regime. Then it was about Tehran’s nuclear program, which was apparently no longer “obliterated,” as Mr. Trump had claimed last year. In a short video posted on Saturday morning, the president called for the overthrow of the Iranian government.
In a head-spinning claim on Monday, Mr. Hegseth said: “This is not a regime-change war, but the regime sure did change,” an apparent reference to Iran’s former supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei and other senior leaders killed Saturday by U.S.-Israeli airstrikes.
One thing is certain: The playbook for Iran will not be the same as the one for Venezuela, where U.S. forces captured and removed Nicolás Maduro from power and quickly exited the scene. Mr. Trump decided to keep the regime and the hierarchy in Caracas in place. With many of Iran’s top leadership now dead after two major attacks in less than a year, the White House faces a confounding problem of who on the other side is left to end the war and de-escalate tensions.
Either way, the administration needs to begin explaining its thinking. A Reuters/Ipsos poll released Sunday showed that just one in four Americans approves of the U.S. attack on Iran, while around half believe Mr. Trump uses “too much” military force. Unless the public is given more answers on exactly what the White House intentions are in Iran, those numbers are likely to get worse before they get better.
American service members have now been killed in action, and the administration has said the United States can expect more forces to pay that ultimate sacrifice. The responsibility falls to the president to articulate why war is necessary, and to communicate exactly what America’s sons and daughters are fighting for. The bombs are falling, and we’re still waiting for that message to be delivered.
W.J. Hennigan writes about national security for Opinion.
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