By Destine Nde
On 13 March, about two weeks after start of the US-Israeli War on Iran, the messianic US Defence Secretary, Pete Hegseth (now called the ‘secretary of war’), made the following boastful and arrogant statement during a Pentagon Press Briefing:
‘We will start with with the bottom line up front, for the world to hear and the press to actually admit, that the United States is decimating the radical Iranian regime’s military in a way the world has never seen before. Never before has a modern capable military, which Iran used to have, been so quickly destroyed and made combat ineffective, devastated.
‘We said it would not be a fair fight and it has not been. As I stated during our first press conference on day two – that was 10 short days ago – the combination of the world’s two most powerful air forces is unprecedented and unbeatable. Between our Air Force and that of the Israelis, over 15,000 enemy targets have been struck. That’s well over 1,000 a day.
‘No other combination of countries in the world can do that. So today, as we speak, we fly over the top of Iran and Tehran, fighters and bombers all day, picking targets as they choose, as our intelligence gets better and better and more refined. Looking up, the IRGC and Iranian regime sees only two things on the side of aircraft: the stars and stripes and the Star of David, the evil regime’s worst nightmare.
‘Iran has no air defenses. Iran has no air force. Iran has no Navy. Their missiles, their missile launchers and drones being destroyed or shot out of the sky. Their missile volume is down 90%. Their one-way attack drones yesterday, down 95%. And as the world is seeing, they are exercising sheer desperation in the Straits of Hormuz, something we’re dealing with, we have been dealing with it and don’t need to worry about it.
‘We’re on plan to defeat, destroy, disable all of their meaningful military capabilities at a pace the world has never seen before. But it’s not just that Iran doesn’t have a functioning Air Force or that their entire Navy is at the bottom of the Persian Gulf or their missile force is shrinking daily. Even more importantly, they also don’t have the ability to build more.
‘Soon, and very soon, all of Iran’s defense companies will be destroyed. For example, as of two days ago, Iran’s entire ballistic missile production capacity, every company that builds every component of those missiles, has been functionally defeated, destroyed. Buildings, complexes and factory lines all across Iran, destroyed.
‘So we’re shooting down and destroying what missiles they still have in stock, but more importantly, ensuring that they have no ability to make more. Their production lines, their military plants, their defense innovation centers, defeated. Iran’s leadership is in no better shape, desperate and hiding, they’ve gone underground, cowering. That’s what rats do. …’
[Editor’s note: We quote this at some length because it must be one of the most extraordinary statements made by such a figure in recent times. The full text of the Press Briefing appears here.]
On 24 March, while discussing the US air campaign against Iran on March 24, Hegseth declared: ‘We negotiate with bombs. … We are keeping our hands on that throttle for as long as it’s hard and necessary.’
It was embarrassing for the leading figures of a major world power to make such extreme and melodramatic statements, only to turn around shortly afterwards and start talking about negotiations, and even a peaceful ending to the war.
In fact, Donald Trump then made it worse by trying to lay the blame for the war on two core members of his executive. Barely seconds after Hegseth said ‘we negotiate with bombs’, Trump took the stand and said that he, Hegseth, and the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff (CJCS), Dan ‘Raizin’ Caine, would be ‘disappointed’ by a quick end to the war.
‘These things are going to be settled very soon’, he said. ‘It’s too bad. Pete and General Cain didn’t want it to be settled. It’s sad … They were not interested in settlement. They were interested in just winning this thing. Well we’re in negotiations as it turns out. We’re in negotiations right now.’
In response, Iran stated categorically that they were not engaged in any negotiations with the US, and showed no signs of eagerness or interest in doing so. According to Iran, the US and Israel could simply not be trusted – they were too cunning, too sly and too deceptive (not to mention too narcissistic and too egotistic). If there would be any negotiations between them, the terms would be laid down by Iran.
Earlier this week, the speaker of the Iranian parliament, Mohammed Bagher Ghalibaf, said that ‘no negotiations have been held with the US’. And according to Aljazeera, Ghalibaf accused Trump of trying to ‘manipulate the financial and oil markets and escape the quagmire in which the US and Israel are trapped’.
Despite all of this, Trump has insisted that Iran is desperately asking to negotiate. On 24 March, he declared that Iran would ‘like to make a deal. Who wouldn’t? Their navy is gone. Their air force is gone. Their communication is gone — and this is the most devastating of all, because they can’t communicate among themselves. Their anti-aircrafts are gone. Their missiles are gone. Everything is gone.’
While this state of affairs may have embarrassed the US, it has perplexed the rest of the world. Why would these arrogant figures make such an about-turn? How could their extreme threats be so easily abandoned or forgotten? And if the US and Israel are as powerful as they claim to be, why don’t they defeat Iran at once? Why revert to negotiations?
The answer is quite simple: global and domestic economic and political pressures. By disrupting the smooth flow of shipping – notably oil tankers – through the Strait of Hormuz, Iran has profoundly affected the global economy, sending the costs of living skyrocketing in many countries, and America is no exception.
Despite efforts to move away from this, fossil fuels – notably crude oil – is still the dominant source of energy – in fact, it fossil fuels still account for roughly 80 per cent of the world’s energy, and remains indispensable.
So when the complex global network of oil distribution is disrupted, and it becomes a scarce commodity, prices rise, and because of its foundational economic role, prices of almost all other goods and services rise as well.
Dismally, the head of the International Energy Agency, Faith Birol, has warned that the present energy crisis is more severe ‘than the two energy crises of the 1970s and the fallout of the Ukraine war put together’.
On the domestic side, Americans are becoming increasingly disenchanted with Trump’s war expenses and his aggressive posture against Iran. First, his growing army of critics have demanded that his administration should provide a legal basis for starting the war against Iran – to prove ineluctably that the US or its closest ally, Israel, were under imminent danger.
Trump and his team have not been able to do so. All they have said is that their mission was clear from day one, namely that Iran should not be allowed to develop nuclear weapons that could reach American soil.
Now the embarrassing situation Trump has put the nation in – by unilaterally starting the war and trying to end it unilaterally, while there are no signs of Iran’s expected capitulation — is evident to all.
In response, Trump gave Iran a 48-hour ultimatum to ensure the safe passages of oil tankers through the Strait of Hormuz. Should Iran fail to reopen the route, he would ‘hit and obliterate’ Iran’s power plants, starting with the largest and most important one. This ultimatum was given on March 22, and expired on March 24. Iran did not respect it – instead, it made counterthreats of its own, and the US did nothing.
To save face, Trump started blasting the media with talks about negotations. On the same day, he told reporters that discussions had started ‘yesterday evening. It might take five days. Otherwise we will keep bombing their little hearts out.’
Even more embarrasingly, he added: ‘We are roaming free over Tehran. We can do whatever we want. … This war has been won. We literally have planes flying over Iran and they can’t do a thing about it’.
But the truth of the matter has been obvious: the US and Israel acted impetuously. They rushed into war against Iran without considering the legal, economic and humanitarian ramifications. Now, possibly stunned by Iran’s resilience, they desperately want it to end, among others so that they can revise their strategies and attack Iran again in the future – and halt the tide of publlc opinion turning against them in their own countries.
The question has been: What would Iran do? Trump’s ‘five-day period of grace’ was due to expire on the day of publication of this article — Saturday 28 March.
During the now notorious press briefing on 13 March, Hegseth declared: ‘Our will, it is unshakable. Our options, maximized. And our capabilities still building. We’re going up, they’re going down. As I said from the start, President Trump holds the cards. He’ll determine the pace, the tempo and the timing of this conflict, his hand firmly on the wheel as well as on the throttle setting. America first, peace through strength, in action.’
To much of the rest of the world, and a growing number of Americans, it seems as if that grip is slipping.
Also see: David Smith, ‘A very dangerous person’: alarm as Pete Hegseth revels in carnage of Iran war, The Guardian, 8 March 2026.
FEATURED IMAGE: General Dan Caine and Secretary of War Pete Hegseth listen as President Donald J. Trump talks about Operation Epic Fury at Mar-a-Lago, Palm Beach, Florida, on 1 March 2026. (White House / Daniel Torok / Flickr)
A very accurate account of the mess the USA and its arrogant leadership has plunged the world into.