War Secretary Pete Hegseth refused to take any option off the table when it comes to the war in Iran.
refused to take any option off the table during a press briefing on Tuesday when it comes to the war in “We’re not going to foreclose any option you can’t fight and win a war, to tell your adversary what you are willing to do or what you are not willing to do, to include boots on the ground,” the secretary said.
WATCH LIVE: Hegseth and Caine give update on Iran war The U.S. has deployed thousands of Marines, sailors, and members of the Army’s 82nd Airborne Division to the region since the war began, providing new capabilities to the military’s presence in the Middle East. There are approximately 50,000 troops currently in the region. “Our adversary right now thinks there are 15 different ways we could come at them with boots on the ground,” Hegseth explained. “And guess what? There are. So if we needed to, we could execute those options on behalf of the president of the United States and this department, or maybe we don’t have to use them at all.” He also declined to put a timeline on how much longer the war would go on, saying, “It could be any, any particular number, but we would never reveal precisely what it is, because our goal is to finish those objectives.”to the region over the weekend to meet with service members participating in the conflict, but he did not specify where exactly he traveled. Iran has shut down the Strait of Hormuz, which has had global implications for oil prices, and its leaders have said they want to implement a system in which countries have to pay them for safe passage.has threatened to attack Iran’s “Electric Generating Plants, Oil Wells and Kharg Island ” if it does not come to an agreement with the United States to end the war. He has given a deadline of Monday, but he has already pushed the deadline back multiple times. Experts have raised questions about the legality of such strikes that would have wide-ranging impacts on civilians. “The joint force is the most professional force in the world,” Gen. Dan Caine, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, said during the briefing about the possibility of carrying out the president’s threat. “We have numerous processes and systems that carefully consider the whole range of considerations from civilian risk to legal considerations within target, and as targets come before us, we run them through the same process that we always do and always strike lawful targets in accordance with the normal procedure.” The U.S. has continued to target Iran’s defense industrial base so that it is unable to replenish and produce additional drones and missiles, which it has fired indiscriminately across the region. Iran continues to fire drones and missiles, but the number of such attacks has decreased over the course of the conflict.To date, there have been 348 U.S. service members injured in the war, 315 of whom have already returned to duty, indicating their injuries were not severe, according to a U.S. Central Command spokesperson. Twelve troops have been “seriously wounded,” but the military has not detailed any of their injuries specifically. Multiple troops were injured late last week in an Iranian attack on a U.S. Air Force Base in Saudi Arabia. A key U.S. Air Force E-3 Sentry aircraft was destroyed in the attack as well. “The E-3 Sentry is an airborne warning and control system, or AWACS, aircraft with an integrated command and control battle management, or C2BM, surveillance, target detection, and tracking platform,” an Air ForceThe Air Force’s E-3 fleet is only at 16, and losing one that was involved in the current conflict could pose new challenges as the war persists, according to Hegseth praised the administration’s efforts to expand the defense industrial base to make up for the expended critical munitions used in the conflict, but he did not address the loss of the crucial aircraft.
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