Pete Hegseth squirmed at the Pentagon over a damning intel leak showing Donald Trump’s war on Iran has barely slowed the regime’s race to a nuclear bomb.
The defense secretary, 45, was confronted by reporters on Tuesday after Reuters reported that the timeline for Iran to assemble a nuclear weapon—currently estimated at up to a year—has not budged since the U.S. first bombed the regime’s facilities last June, despite the fresh blitz the president launched in late February.
Pressed on how the timeline could be unchanged “after so much bombing,” Hegseth refused to engage with the substance of the question, telling the briefing room: “We don’t discuss the specifics about intel, and anybody that does shouldn’t be, and I can’t confirm or deny whether that is, indeed, correct.”
Hegseth then accused the questioner of inventing the story—as he so often does—saying: “Speculation as far as I’m concerned, coming from you.”
As the Daily Beast reported earlier Tuesday, the leaked assessments are damaging to Trump, 79, who has boasted since last summer that U.S. bombs had “obliterated” the Islamic Republic’s atomic ambitions.
The president restarted the conflict in late February with a second wave of bombings, only for his own intelligence services to now conclude that Tehran is as close to a bomb as it was almost a year ago.
Hegseth then pivoted to a lengthy defense of Operation Midnight Hammer, the codename for last summer’s initial U.S. assault, claiming the president had set Iran’s program back “like no other president” and “ripped up the terrible deal that would have given them a bomb.”
The former Fox & Friends Weekend host went on to argue Tehran was pursuing what he called “the North Korea strategy”: building up “a conventional umbrella of so many missiles and capabilities no one would want to challenge them” while quietly developing nuclear weapons underneath.
“We’re watching it right now and ultimately feel good about the fact that the end state will ensure Iran never has a nuclear weapon,” he insisted.
The squirming performance comes amid a shaky truce brokered by Pakistan in April, with Trump zigzagging between dismissing Iranian demands—which include ending the naval blockade and paying compensation for war damage—and, 24 hours later, crowing on Truth Social that “very positive discussions” were now underway with Tehran.
The Daily Beast has contacted the Pentagon and the White House for further comment.
