In Focus delivers deeper coverage of the political, cultural, and ideological issues shaping America. Published daily by senior writers and experts, these in-depth pieces go beyond the headlines to give readers the full picture. You can find our full list of In Focus pieces here.
Secretary of War Pete Hegseth has declared that the U.S. military has “no stupid rules of engagement” in its war against Iran.
The military’s unrelenting bombing campaign has included hitting thousands of targets from land, sea, and air, while Iranian forces have fired hundreds of ballistic missiles and thousands of drones at Israel and several other countries in the region. U.S. forces have sunk or destroyed around 30 ships in the Iranian navy, targeting ballistic missile stockpiles and production facilities.
“No stupid rules of engagement, no nation-building quagmire, no democracy building exercise, no politically correct wars. We fight to win, and we don’t waste time or lives,” he said on Monday. The goals of the war, Hegseth continued, boil down to, “destroy the missile threat, destroy the navy, no nukes.”
IN FOCUS: TRUMP CLOSED THE GAP BETWEEN RHETORIC AND ACTION ON IRAN
Rules of engagement, broadly, are the framework provided by the president and secretary to deployed units regarding the use of force to accomplish the mission.
According to Emily Harding, an expert with the Center for Strategic and International Studies, the U.S. Armed Forces are “prosecuting the targets they’re going after very aggressively, and in my mind, it’s a good thing to constrain the warfighter as little as possible.”
Nonetheless, one strike — possibly from the United States — hit a girls’ school in southern Iran killing more than 150 people, the majority of whom were students, raising concerns about the new rules of engagement.
Minab strike
During the opening salvo of strikes last weekend, a school in Minab, Iran, was bombed. Local media reported that the death toll from the strike was more than 150, many of whom were young female students. Neither the U.S. nor Israel has taken responsibility for the strike.
“All I can say is that we’re investigating that. We, of course, never target civilian targets, but we’re taking a look and investigating that,” Hegseth said, while a CENTCOM official told the Washington Examiner, “It would be inappropriate to comment given the incident is under investigation.”
American military investigators believe it’s likely that U.S. forces were responsible for the strike but have not reached a final conclusion yet, according to Reuters. The school was previously a part of the Iranian Islamic Revolutionary Guards’ naval base, according to the New York Times, which cited satellite images from 2013. The school was next to an IRGC facility, according to the Wall Street Journal.
READ IN FULL: PRESIDENT DONALD TRUMP’S STATE OF THE UNION SPEECH
United Nations experts have called for an independent investigation and condemned the strike.
American casualties
Six American service members were killed in an Iranian drone retaliatory attack in Kuwait at the Port of Shuaiba, and others were injured.
They were: Capt. Cody A. Khork, 35; Sgt. 1st Class Noah L. Tietjens, 42; Sgt. 1st Class Nicole M. Amor, 39; Sgt. Declan J. Coady, 20; Maj. Jeffrey R. O’Brien, 45; Chief Warrant Officer 3 Robert Marzan, 54.
MIXED GOP RECEPTION FOR TRUMP BAN ON LARGE INVESTORS BUYING SINGLE-FAMILY HOMES
Hegseth, during Wednesday’s briefing, suggested that the press reports on American war casualties “to make the president look bad.”
“This is what the fake news misses,” he said. “We’ve taken control of Iran’s airspace and waterways without boots on the ground. We control their fate, but when a few drones get through or tragic things happen, it’s front-page news. I get it. The press only wants to make the president look bad, but try for once to report the reality, the terms of this war will be set by us at every step.”
Gen. Dan Caine, the chairman of the joint chiefs of staff, began his comments during the briefing by reciting their names.
President Donald Trump, among other defense officials, has warned that the U.S. could incur additional fatalities or casualties.
“And sadly, there will likely be more [deaths] before it ends,” Trump said last weekend in the opening hours of the war, before adding: “That’s the way it is. Likely be more.”
On Friday, Hegseth adopted a more conciliatory approach on social media, saying: “Our nation mourns the loss of six extraordinary American heroes. These brave warriors gave everything in service to our country, supporting Operation Epic Fury.”
TOM ROGAN: HEGSETH SHOULD DROP THE FLIPPANT BLUSTER
Pre-war
The secretary’s belief that Washington has a history of constraining the hands of warfighters long predates the current conflict, not to mention his tenure. It’s one aspect of his larger belief that the Pentagon had been corrupted with “wokeness,” which, in his opinion, did nothing to help warfighters deter adversaries and win wars if needed.
TRUMP ENDORSEMENT TRACKER: HERE’S WHO THE PRESIDENT HAS PICKED IN GOP MIDTERM ELECTION PRIMARIES
He had the services end all trainings and programs involved with diversity and inclusion and several other topics that he viewed as distractions from the department’s mission.
He addressed the subject in his speech to hundreds of senior officers in Quantico, Virginia, last October.
“We fight to win. We unleash overwhelming and punishing violence on the enemy. We also don’t fight with stupid rules of engagement,” he said. “We untie the hands of our warfighters to intimidate, demoralize, hunt and kill the enemies of our country. No more politically correct and overbearing rules of engagement, just common sense, maximum lethality and authority for warfighters. You kill people and break things for a living. You are not politically correct and don’t necessarily belong always in polite society.”
Hegseth signed a directive early in his tenure easing restrictions on airstrikes and the deployment of US Special Forces.
In the spring of 2025, the U.S. military had a roughly two-month-long conflict against the Houthis, an Iranian-aligned proxy based in Yemen.
Gen. Alex Grynkewich, then the Joint Staff Director for Operations, said last March that the loosened restrictions allowed U.S. troops to “achieve a [faster] tempo of operations,” compared to previous fighting between the Houthis and U.S. forces under the previous administration.
TRUMP AND MAMDANI’S UNLIKELY POLITICAL ALLIANCE: ‘A NEW YORK CITY SOAP OPERA’
“It’s a much broader set of targets that we’ve been able to action in this case and the other key difference is the delegation of authorities from the president through Secretary Hegseth down to the operational commander,” Grynkewich explained. “So that allows us to achieve a tempo of operations, where we can react to opportunities that we see on the battlefield in order to continue to put pressure on the Houthis.”
In Trump’s first administration, when Hegseth was a Fox News host, he pushed the president to pardon United States servicemen accused of war crimes, which Trump ultimately did.
Army Lt. Clint Lorance was sentenced to a 19-year prison sentence for ordering a soldier to fire on unarmed Afghan motorcyclists in 2012, while Army Green Beret Maj. Matt Golsteyn was charged with the 2010 murder of a suspected Taliban bomb maker. Trump pardoned both men in 2019, and he restored the rank of Navy SEAL Eddie Gallagher, who was acquitted of killing a wounded ISIS captive, but was sentenced to four months of time served and a reduction in rank for posing with a corpse .
Hegseth broke the news that he believed Trump would intervene in their cases at the time after his advocacy shortly before the formal announcement came.
Civilian casualties of the past
Mistakes are, of course, not unique to this current administration, if indeed that is what has happened in Minab.
Under the Biden administration, during the chaotic withdrawal of Afghanistan in August 2021, U.S. forces carried out a drone strike targeting a man whom they believed had a bomb and was heading toward the airport where U.S. service members were evacuating civilians. Thirteen U.S. service members had been killed only days earlier, and there were significant concerns about the possibility of additional attacks.
US WAR IN IRAN IS ‘FULL STEAM AHEAD’ WITH CONTINUED BOMBINGS
That individual, Zemari Ahmadi, was not, in fact, an ISIS-K militant, as U.S. military personnel believed, nor did he pose a threat to the American forces nearby. He was killed along with nine others, many of whom were his family members who had come out to greet him as he arrived at home.
The Pentagon acknowledged targeting a civilian, though an investigation into the strike concluded there were no illegalities.
Under President Barack Obama, and also in Afghanistan, this time in October 2015, the U.S. military launched an airstrike on a Doctors Without Borders trauma center in Kunduz, killing more than 40 people and injuring more than 200 others. The Pentagon also accepted responsibility for the errant strike, which then-President Barack Obama apologized for in a conversation with then-Afghan President Ashraf Ghani.
Ben Rhodes, Obama’s former deputy national security adviser, called out Hegseth on Thursday about the school strike.
“When Hegseth brags about loosening rules of engagement (with little media pushback) this happens,” he wrote.
WHO ARE THE KURDS, THE GROUP RUMORED TO BE JOINING THE US WAR IN IRAN?
Conservative commentator Marc Thiessen was quick to point out the 2015 incident.
“Such a clown. You hit a hospital in Afghanistan.”
