Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth on Monday declared, “This is not Iraq. This is never-ending,” widening fears that US-Israeli strikes in Iran could turn into a protracted regional conflict.
Hegseth, along with Air Force Gen. Dan Cain, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, held the Trump administration’s first news briefing since Saturday’s strike.
President Donald Trump, while he has conducted a few phone interviews with individual reporters, has not taken questions on camera and released only two videos since the operation began.
Hegseth said the mission had a “clear, devastating, decisive mission” to “destroy the missile threat” from Iran, destroy its navy and “no nukes.”
“It may not be called a regime change war, but the regime has certainly changed and the world is better for it,” Hegseth said.
The briefing comes as conflict in the region has escalated into a full-scale war. Iran and its allied armed groups have fired missiles at Israel, Arab states and US military targets in the Middle East.
Four American soldiers were killed in this operation. Trump on Sunday predicted more US casualties.
Kaine said Monday that the U.S. is expected to bear additional losses.
“We grieve with you and we will never forget you,” he said of family members of those killed.
The latest sign of the escalating revolution came when US ally Kuwait “mistakenly shot down” three American fighter jets during a combat operation while Iranian planes, ballistic missiles and drones were attacking.
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All six pilots ejected safely from the American F-15E Strike Eagles and are in stable condition, US Central Command said.
US officials have offered no exit plan or signs the conflict will end anytime soon, and the assassination of Iran’s supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei cast doubt on the future of the Islamic Republic and plunged the region into broader instability.
In laying out the case for the strikes, Hegseth pointed out that the Iranian regime has been behind the conflict since its inception, declaring that for 47 years it has “waged a vicious, one-sided war against America.”
“Their war on the Americans is our revenge against their Ayatollah and his cult of death,” he said.
He pointed to no threat of an imminent nuclear threat from Iran, and reiterated that strikes by the US and Israel last summer “destroyed their nuclear program.”
Instead, Hegseth pointed to threats from other weapons, such as ballistic missiles and drones, that justify the operation.
“Iran is building powerful missiles and drones to create a traditional shield for their nuclear blackmail ambitions,” Hegseth said.
During talks with U.S. officials leading up to the attack, he said Iranian officials were “holding back.”
In an interview with The New York Times on Sunday, Trump said the invasion would last “four to five weeks.”
The Republican president said the US and Israel had already hit hundreds of targets. It also claimed that Israel and the US bombed Iranian missile sites and targeted its navy, destroying its headquarters and several warships.
The Iranian Red Crescent Society said at least 555 people have been killed in Iran so far as a result of the US-Israeli campaign. Eleven people died in Israel and 31 in Lebanon, according to officials there.
© 2026 The Canadian Press
(tags to translate) Iran
