Defense secretary refuses to establish timeline for how long operation will continue in first public remarks since strikes
The US secretary of defense, Pete Hegseth, has called the joint US-Israeli strikes in Iran the “most lethal and precise air power campaign in history”, indicated the US did not plan to effect a democratic transition in Iran – and refused to establish a clear timeline for how long the US operation will continue.
In the first public remarks by an administration official since the war began on Saturday, Hegseth also said that the US did not have “boots on the ground” in Iran but that he wouldn’t speculate what “we will or will not do”. He also said that four US service members had been killed by a ballistic missile that managed to penetrate allied air defenses.
But speaking soon afterwards, Donald Trump said he did not rule out sending US ground troops into Iran “if they were necessary”.
In an interview with the New York Post the president said: “I don’t have the yips with respect to boots on the ground – like every president says, ‘There will be no boots on the ground.’ I don’t say it … I say ‘probably don’t need them’ [or] ‘if they were necessary.’”
