WASHINGTON — Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth and the top U.S. military officer, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff General Dan Caine, held a news conference Thursday at the Pentagon to discuss the U.S. strikes on Iran.
Hegseth said they decided to hold the briefing because “there was a great deal of irresponsible reporting” based on a preliminary intelligence assessment. He criticized “biased leaks to biased publications.”
“If you want to know what’s going on at Fordo, you better go there and get a big shovel,” he said.
The defense secretary minimized the importance of a preliminary intelligence assessment that concluded U.S. strikes on three Iranian nuclear facilities had damaged but not permanently destroyed them.
Hegseth scolded the media for “breathlessly” focusing on an assessment from the Defense Intelligence Agency, even though the DIA is part of the Defense Department that he himself leads.
He said the assessment was preliminary and had not been coordinated with other agencies in the intelligence community. He said other intelligence assessments have been more bullish in their assessments on damage of the sites.
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