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Pete Hegseth, the US defense secretary, has said “there will be more casualties” in the US military from the Trump administration’s war in Iran after officials confirmed on Sunday that the number of US service members killed had climbed to seven.
Hegseth made the statement during an appearance Sunday night on CBS’s 60 Minutes, during which he portrayed Donald Trump’s decision for the US to join Israeli attacks on the Middle East country as essential “to advance American interests, and protect American lives”.
Asked about the deaths of seven army reservists in a retaliatory Iranian drone strike on a US base in Kuwait a week ago, Hegseth said: “The president’s been right to say there will be casualties. Things like this don’t happen without casualties. There will be more casualties.
“No one is, I mean, especially our generation knows, knows what it’s like to see Americans come home in caskets. But that doesn’t weaken us one bit. It stiffens our spine and our resolve to say this is a fight we will finish.”
As the self-branded “secretary of war”, Hegseth – a former Fox News host – has been the bellicose public face of what the US military has dubbed Operation Epic Fury. He has received criticism for allegedly revelling in the carnage of a conflict that, as of Monday, had already cost hundreds of lives in a matter of nine days.
Hegseth at one point promised “death and destruction from the sky all day long”. Those comments were made four days after Iranian officials said at least 175 people were killed in an airstrike on an Iranian girls’ school that military investigators believe was carried out by US forces.
In his CBS interview, recorded on Friday and aired Sunday night, Hegseth promised that the assault on Iran so far – which the US military said had struck at least 3,000 targets – was “only just the beginning”.
He also contradicted Republican House speaker Mike Johnson when the latter man claimed the US was not at war with Iran – and that he believed the military operation in the Middle East was almost finished.
Speaking about the death of former Ayatollah Ali Khamenei early in the conflict, Hegseth said it was “not a regime-change war in the conventional sense” and that the US forces would continue to operate until Trump’s vague strategic objectives had been met.
“People ask, ‘boots on the ground, no boots on the ground, four weeks, two weeks, six weeks, go in, go in?’” he said.
“President Trump knows – I know – you don’t tell the enemy, you don’t tell the press, you don’t tell anybody what your limits would be on an operation. We’re willing to go as far as we need to in order to be successful.”
But Hegseth was adamant that it was “not a fair fight” and that Iran would soon be on its knees.
“Our capabilities are overwhelming compared to what Iran’s are,” he said. “And frankly, when you combine our air force with the air force of the [Israel] Defense Forces, it’s the two most powerful air forces in the world.
“The ability for us to be up over the top and hunting with more conventional munitions, gravity bombs, 500lb, 1,000lb, 2,000lb bombs on military targets that, we haven’t even really begun to start that effort of the campaign, which is gonna showcase even more how we will execute on those objectives.”
The 60 Minutes host Major Garrett asked Hegseth about Trump’s assertion he would not negotiate with Iran and instead seek the country’s unconditional surrender.
“It means we’re fighting to win,” Hegseth said. “It means we set the terms. We’ll know when they’re not capable of fighting. There’ll be a point where they’ll have no choice but to do that. Whether they know it or not, they will be combat-ineffective. They will surrender.”
On Saturday, Trump insisted the deadly airstrike on the girls’ school was conducted by Iran. “Based on what I’ve seen, that was done by Iran. They’re very inaccurate as you know with their munitions,” the president told reporters on Air Force One.
By Sunday, however, footage was beginning to circulate of what appeared to be a US Tomahawk missile striking in the vicinity of the elementary school close to a compound of the Iranian Revolutionary Guard.
Hegseth on CBS appeared to take a step back from Trump’s assertion. “I would say that it’s being investigated, which is the only answer I’m prepared to give,” he said.
