Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth said that “America is winning” the war in Iran, though the operation is only just beginning.
“Metrics are shifting, settling, and more forces are arriving,” Hegseth said at a press conference Wednesday morning. “It’s very early, and as President Trump has said, we will take all the time we need to make sure that we succeed.”
Hegseth said that an exact time limit can’t be placed on the operation because, “The only limits we have in this is President Trump’s desire to achieve specific effects on behalf of the American people.”
Trump initially said the operation would only last four to five weeks but has since said there is not a definitive end date. American officials have touted the war so far as a success but Hegseth suggested the conflict had only just started.
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“Four days in, we have only just begun to fight,” Hegseth said.
According to Hegseth, U.S. and Israeli aerial forces are working their way toward “complete control of Iranian skies, uncontested airspace.”
Once that is achieved, the Pentagon believes they will be able to maintain pressure on targets in Iran for an unspecified amount of time.
“It means we will fly all day, all night, day and night, finding, fixing and finishing the missiles and defense industrial base of the Iranian military,” Hegseth said. “Finding and fixing their leaders and their military leaders. Flying over Tehran, flying over Iran, flying over their capital, flying over the IRGC. Iranian leaders looking up and seeing only U.S. and Israeli airpower every minute of every day, until we decide it’s over. And Iran will be able to do nothing about it.”
Some officials have continued to rule out boots on the ground; the chair of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Dan Caine, called it “a question for policymakers.” Republicans on Capitol Hill have largely been supportive of Trump’s offensive, which he says he does not need congressional approval to conduct. However, Republican senators indicated that a swell of ground troops would be a red line for them.
Hegseth and Caine said that Iran’s ballistic missile capabilities have been eroded, leading to a significant decrease in the amount of missiles the country is able to shoot.
“This progress has allowed CENTCOM to establish localized air superiority across the southern flank of the Iranian coast and penetrate their defenses with overwhelming precision and firepower. We will now begin to expand inland, striking progressively deeper into Iranian territory and creating additional freedom of maneuver for U.S. forces,” Caine said.
Hegseth said that in four days, Operation Epic Fury has delivered twice the airpower as Shock and Awe, referring to the initial U.S. campaign to invade Iraq in 2003, “minus Paul Bremer and the nation-building.”
An Iranian girls’ school was hit in the early hours of the campaign; the search for the dead has since concluded, and the death toll is 175. Asked if the Pentagon was aware of who was responsible, Hegseth said an investigation is ongoing.
“All I know, all I can say, is that we’re investigating, that we, of course, never target civilian targets, but we’re taking a look at investigating,” he said.
Hegseth also revealed for the first time the names of four of the six U.S. troops who have died, with all four being army reservists out of Iowa. He did not announce any new casualties.
It remains unclear what will follow the U.S. campaign. Hegseth said that Iran’s senior leaders are dead, while members of the governing council, who would pick a successor, are dead, missing, or in hiding, in addition to senior military officers. Hegseth and Caine provided no update on those plans.
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