Hegseth denies Iran campaign will turn into endless war

[WASHINGTON] Defence Secretary Pete Hegseth denied that the conflict with Iran would turn into the sort of endless war that President Donald Trump has repeatedly sworn to avoid, but declined to say how much longer it would last.

“This is not Iraq, this is not endless,” Hegseth said on Monday (Mar 2) during a press conference at the Pentagon. “Our generation knows better and so does this president.” At the same time, he said, “I would never hang a time frame from our perspective.”

The briefing from Hegseth was the first media availability by a top administration official since the US and Israel launched the campaign against Iran early Saturday.

He justified the attack by saying that Iran had a “conventional gun to our head” as it sought an atomic weapon, and that negotiations aimed at getting a nuclear deal amounted to nothing more than Iranian attempts at stalling for time.

Hegseth and Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Dan Caine offered a few more details about the campaign, saying four US service members had been killed so far. Regarding the strike that killed the American troops, Hegseth said air defences had failed to intercept an incoming attack on a tactical operations centre.

Throughout the briefing, Hegseth repeatedly sought to downplay fears that Trump was dragging the US into a quagmire or open-ended conflict such as the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan that he campaigned against.

Despite Trump’s previous denunciation of the ideas of nation building and regime change, he launched an operation in January that captured Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro and authorised this week’s campaign that killed Iran’s supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei.

“This is not a so-called regime-change war, but the regime sure did change and the world is better off for it,” Hegseth said. “Our ambitions are not utopian – they are realistic.”

In his remarks, Caine detailed the early stages of the campaign and said, “this work is just beginning and will continue.” Hegseth declined to give a sense of how long the operation would last or what next steps would look like. 

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“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 said. “We fight to win the objectives the president of the United States has laid out.” BLOOMBERG