US Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth warned Iran that Tuesday will “once again be our most intense day of attacks inside Iran.”
“The most fighters, the most bombers, the most strikes, more refined and better intelligence than ever before,” he told media at a Pentagon news conference.
Hegseth noted that “in the last 24 hours, Iran has fired the fewest missiles it has ever fired.”
Amid mixed messages about the length of the war, Hegseth again promised that the Trump administration was not entering another quagmire in the Middle East.
“This is not 2003, this is not endless nation building… It’s not even close. This generation of soldiers and this president will not let that happen,” he said.
Gen. Dan Caine, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, said U.S. forces hit more than 5,000 targets, and their three objectives included destroying Iran’s ballistic missile and drone capabilities, striking Iran’s navy to allow movement through the Strait of Hormuz, and striking “deeper into Iran’s military and industrial base.”
Caine also confirmed that the United States was carrying out attacks against Iranian mine vessels.
The war has effectively closed the Strait of Hormuz, a bottleneck for global shipping of oil and liquefied natural gas, leaving oil tankers unable to navigate for more than a week and forcing producers to stop pumping as storage fills.
With AP and Reuters
