War Secretary Pete Hegseth disputed on Monday that the American operation in Iran is about regime change, even if that is an effect of the conflict.
“This is not a so-called regime change war, but the regime sure did change, and the world is better off for it today,” Hegseth said in his first public comments since the United States launched the opening strikes on Saturday morning.
Early Saturday morning, the U.S. and Israel launched overwhelming strikes on targets across Iran that included going after their senior leaders, killing Ayatollah Ali Khamenei and many of his closest lieutenants. They also targeted Iranian command and control centers, integrated air defense systems, ballistic missile sites, navy ships and submarines, and more.
He said their objectives are “laser focused” and consist of destroying Iran’s offensive missiles and missile production, its navy, and other military infrastructure.
“This is not Iraq,” the secretary added during his press conference at the Pentagon. “This is not endless. I was there for both. Our generation knows better, and so does this president. He called the last 20 years of nation-building wars dumb, and he’s right. This is the opposite. This operation is a clear, devastating, decisive mission. Destroy the missile threat, destroy the Navy, no nukes.”
He added: “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.”
With so many senior Iranian leaders killed in the early hours of the war, it’s unclear who the next leader will be and who could negotiate an end to the conflict from the Iranian side.
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He said the U.S. does not currently have troops in Iran but did not rule out the possibility, adding, “We’re not going to go into the exercise of what we will or will not do.”
Hegseth, Gen. Dan Caine, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, and President Donald Trump have all warned that this war could last a number of weeks and that they expect the U.S. will have more casualties than it suffered in the early hours of the conflict.
“This is not a single overnight operation,” Caine told reporters. “The military objectives that CENTCOM and the Joint Forces have been tasked with will take some time to achieve, and in some cases, will be difficult and gritty work.”
Trump predicted the operation could take up to four weeks, though Hegseth noted it could be more or less depending on how it plays out.
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Four American service members have been killed, and a handful of others have been wounded. The military has not yet identified the fallen as they carry out next of kin notifications. The Pentagon hasn’t released where the service members who were killed were at the time of their deaths, but Hegseth acknowledged they were in a fortified tactical operation center when it was hit by an Iranian projectile.
Hegseth, during his time in the Army National Guard, deployed to Iraq and Afghanistan and saw the shortcomings in both of those campaigns firsthand.
