Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth has mounted a furious early morning rant over the U.S. strikes against Iran, accusing the press of trying to “manipulate the public’s mind” about the success of the attack.
As Iran’s supreme leader downplayed the impact of the strike with a social media post on Thursday morning, a very animated Hegseth held an 8 am press conference at the Pentagon to once again insist the country’s nuclear facilities were “decimated” and lash out at a leaked intelligence report suggesting otherwise.
But in his angry tirade, Hegseth took particular aim at the press in the room for covering the leaked preliminary intelligence report, even citing his former employer, Fox News.
“You cheer against Trump so hard; it’s like in your DNA and in your blood to cheer against Trump because you want him not to be successful so bad that you have to cheer against the efficacy of these strikes,” he told them.
“How many stories have been written about how hard it is, I don’t know, to fly a plane for 36 hours? Has MSNBC done that story? Has Fox? Have we done the story?” he added.
“How about how difficult it is to shoot a drone from an F15 or 16 or F22 or F35? Or what it’s like to man a patriot battery, or how hard it is to refuel mid-air?”
Later, when his former Fox News colleague, Jennifer Griffin, one of the Pentagon’s most respected reporters, asked whether uranium had been moved from Fordo before the U.S. strikes, Hegseth did not answer and instead attacked her personally.
Griffin, looking momentarily stunned, clapped back. “I was the first to describe the B2 bombers, the refueling, the entire mission with great accuracy. So I take issue with that,” she said.
The tone of the press conference was emblematic of the fury within the White House over the leaked intelligence assessment, which suggested that the strikes only set Iran’s enrichment program back by six months but did not destroy its core components.
The preliminary analysis was produced by the Defense Intelligence Agency, the Pentagon’s intelligence arm, and reportedly found that the bombing of Iran’s nuclear sites sealed off the entrances to two of the facilities but did not collapse their underground buildings.
But during the press conference, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Dan Caine, showed a video that appeared to show the entrances or tunnels into the Fordo nuclear facility collapsing by the force of 30,000-pound bunker bombs unleashed on Saturday.
He also praised the Pentagon analysts who spent years assessing the Fordo nuclear site buried in the Iranian mountains, along with the men and women who took part in the mission.
The presentation was not as muted as the response Caine gave on Sunday, when he told reporters that, while there was “severe damage and destruction” at Fordo, it would take time for the final battle damage to be fully assessed.
But when a reporter later asked him whether he would use the word “obliterated”, Hegseth intervened before the highly respected general could answer.
“I can say obliterated,” Hegseth said. “He’s not involved in politics; he didn’t do politics. That’s my lane to understand and translate, and talk about those types of things.
“So I can use the word obliterated. He could use: ”defeat, destroy, assess–all of those things.”
Another reporter asked Caine if he had been pressured to shift his stance, to which he replied: “No, I have not… I’ve never been pressured by the president or the secretary to do anything other than tell them exactly what I’m thinking.”
Félicitations pour la victoire de notre cher Iran sur le régime américain qui est entré en guerre directe pensant que s’il n’intervenait pas, le régime sioniste serait complètement détruit. Il est entré en guerre pour le sauver, mais n’a rien obtenu.
— Ayatollah Khamenei (@fr_Khamenei) June 26, 2025
The news conference came hours after Iran’s supreme leader made his first comments on the strikes since they took place, claiming they did “nothing significant” to the regime’s nuclear facilities.
“For a great country and nation like Iran, the very mention of surrender is an insult,” he added.
Donald Trump has also spent days pushing back against the intelligence report, which he branded as “fake news” that had demeaned US pilots.
“These Patriots were very upset! After 36 hours of dangerously flying through Enemy Territory, they landed, they knew the Success was LEGENDARY, and then, two days later, they started reading Fake News by CNN and The Failing New York Times. They felt terribly!” he said in a Truth Social post.
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