Washington, March 2 (.) US Defence Secretary Pete Hegseth on Monday dismissed the joint US-Israel assault on Iran as bearing any resemblance to the country’s past offensives in West Asia, stating that Washington was not embarking on another Iraq-style entanglement but was rather executing a “decisive campaign” to dismantle Tehran’s military and nuclear capabilities.
“This is not Iraq, this is not endless war,” Hegseth declared, amid mounting casualties.
Speaking alongside senior military officials at the Pentagon, Hegseth said the operation was geared specifically for a swift and overwhelming assault against Iran’s vast stockpile of missiles, drone fleets, naval assets, and nuclear infrastructure rather than any having any kind of design, aimed towards occupation or regime change – though he said the latter was more than welcome.
“We’re hitting them surgically, overwhelmingly and unapologetically,” he said, adding that Tehran’s nuclear activities and military posturing had crossed a line.
“Iran’s stubborn and self-evident nuclear pursuits, their targeting of global shipping lanes, and their swelling arsenal of ballistic missiles and killer drones are no longer tolerable risks.”
The US Defence Secretary also said that there was no fixed timeline for the ongoing military campaign against Iran, stating that only President Donald Trump could decide when to end the war.
Calling the US campaign the culmination of decades of confrontation between Washington and Tehran, rather than a sudden start on a whim, he said, “We didn’t start this war, but under President Trump, we are finishing.
“Their war on Americans has become our retribution against their Ayatollah.”
He also defended the decision to target Iran’s nuclear infrastructure, arguing that preventing Tehran from acquiring a nuclear weapon had long been a bipartisan objective.
“Crazy regimes like Iran, hell-bent on prophetic Islamist delusions, cannot have nuclear weapons,” he said. “Many have said it, but it takes guts to actually enforce it, and our president has guts.”
The hostilities began following the joint US-Israeli offensive on Saturday, where the two countries carried out coordinated strikes against Iran, killing the most powerful men of the Islamic Republic, including Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei, Sepah commander Mahmoud Papkour, Artesh chief Abdolrahim Mousavi, Defence Minister Aziz Nasirzadeh, Ali Shamkhani, Secretary of the Supreme National Security Council and senior adviser to the Supreme Leader, and senior intelligence leaders Jalal Pour Hossein, and Yahya Hamidi.
Since then, Iran has launched waves of missiles and drones towards Israel, Gulf states and Western military installations. Furthermore, Iran-backed Lebanon-based Islamist militia Hezbollah has opened fire on Israel, prompting heavy Israeli air strikes on Beirut’s southern suburbs.
The conflict has since then spread well beyond the region, as Iranian projectiles have targeted US bases and allied installations, including a British air base in Cyprus.
Washington and Jerusalem maintain that the war’s objective is only to degrade Iran’s offensive capacity and ensure it cannot obtain nuclear weapons, rather than occupation or regime change, due to widening fears that this programme could grow given Tehran’s vast reserves of enriched uranium. . . .