WASHINGTON >> Gen. Dan Caine, the chair of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, said today that the U.S. military was bolstering its forces in the Middle East, sending more troops and fighter jets to the region as America’s war in Iran expands.
“This work is just beginning and will continue,” Caine said, adding that when additional fighter jets arrive in the coming days, the United States will be “just about where we want to be in terms of total combat capacity and total combat power.” He declined to say exactly how big that overall force would be.
But even as Caine’s words suggested an extended military campaign, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, standing beside him at a Pentagon news conference, insisted that this conflict would not spiral into one of the lengthy engagements that have characterized some of the United States’ past ventures in the region.
“This is not Iraq,” Hegseth said. “This is not endless.”
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The dueling messages presented at the Pentagon news conference today, the Trump administration’s first since the United States and Israel struck Iran on Saturday, highlighted the quandary facing America as it embarked on another war in the Middle East.
President Donald Trump has said the conflict could last “four to five weeks” if necessary and made his opposition to protracted military conflict part of his political identity. But with no explicit objective in this war other than forcing Tehran to abandon its nuclear program, Trump administration officials are struggling to explain their reasoning for striking Iran to the American public.
For the first Trump officials sent out to make that case, it was a difficult task, especially since they announced a fourth American death. Hegseth and Caine also had to address the three American F-15 fighter jets mistakenly shot down by Kuwait earlier today.
“I am aware of the loss of three U.S. Air Force F-15Es overnight in the region,” Caine said. “I am grateful for the safety of the crews, and we know that this was not from hostile enemy fire. As this matter’s under investigation, I’ll not comment further on this.” All six crew members were safe after the incident, the U.S. military’s Central Command said in a statement today.
Administration officials have recently taken to repeating that they expect more American casualties, and Hegseth and Caine picked up that mantra today. “War is hell and always will be,” Hegseth said. “A grateful nation honors the four Americans we have lost thus far.” Caine said he expected the United States to “take additional losses.”
Officials have also struggled to articulate the “imminent” threat from Iran that the president claimed the United States was facing in his announcement of the attack, and Hegseth did not mention one at the news conference.
Hegseth said no U.S. ground troops are in Iran, but he did not rule out the possibility. Caine, a former F-16 fighter pilot, said the U.S. could “sustain the fight” against Iran. Military officials privately have already expressed concern about running low on munitions, raising the possibility that the Pentagon may have to dip into stockpiles reserved for other potential conflicts around the world.
For Hegseth, it was the usual combative performance. He denounced as “stupid” the rules of engagement that were supposed to govern wars and protect civilians, and said the United States was bombing Iran as “retribution against their ayatollah and his death cult.”
Referring to Trump, Hegseth said: “He reminded the world, as he has time and time again, that being an American means something unbreakable. If you kill Americans, if you threaten Americans anywhere on Earth, we will hunt you down without apology and without hesitation, and we will kill you.”
Hegseth spent much of his time chiding the news media for their questions rather than answering them. When a reporter said that “people also want to know what they’re sending their men and women to war for,” and asked whether there was a concern that the conflict could spiral into a longer war, Hegseth turned confrontational.
“Did you not hear my remarks?” he said. “We’re ensuring the mission gets accomplished, but we are very clear-eyed, as the president has been, unlike other presidents, about the foolish policies in the past that recklessly pulled us into things that were not tethered to actual, clear objectives.”
This article originally appeared in The New York Times.
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