The United States military has carried out some of the most complex and difficult missions in the history of warfare, from the storming of the beaches of Normandy to the killing of Osama Bin Laden.
But its latest operation — convincing the American media that its mission to destroy Iran’s nuclear capability was a success — is proving to be a challenging one.
Despite President Donald Trump claiming that the attack had left the facilities “completely and totally obliterated,” questions have lingered about the efficacy of Operation Midnight Hammer.
Those questions were given fuel by a leaked initial assessment from the Defense Intelligence Agency that suggested the strikes did not destroy the core components of the country’s nuclear program and likely only set it back by months.
To discredit what the White House called a “flat-out wrong” assessment by “a low-level loser in the intelligence community,” Trump dispatched the might of the U.S. military’s top brass — Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth and Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Air Force General Dan Caine, to set the media straight.
In the early morning press conference, Hegseth played the role of a furious school teacher scolding the Pentagon press corps for not praising the mission or those who carried it out sufficiently, and for focusing too much on the potential downsides — namely the possibility that the strikes did not sufficiently damage Iran’s ability to make a nuclear weapon while simultaneously making it more likely that it builds one in secret.
“It’s like in your DNA and in your blood to cheer against Trump because you want him not to be successful so bad you have to cheer against the efficacy of these strikes,” Hegeth said. “You have to hope maybe they weren’t effective, maybe the way the Trump administration is representing them isn’t true.”
Hegseth seemed to insist that wanting to know if Iran could build a nuke was simply unpatriotic.
“There are so many aspects of what our brave men and women did, that because of the hatred of this press corps, are undermined because you people are trying to leak and spin that it wasn’t successful,” he went on.
Hegseth appeared angry that the journalists sent to cover the Pentagon spent too much time “hunting for scandals” and not enough time praising the bravery of the bomber pilots who carried out this mission — a great irony considering he works for a president who won the White House in part by lambasting the media and political establishment for lying to the American public about the intelligence that led to the Iraq War.
“How many stories have been written about how hard it is to, I don’t know, fly a plane for 36 hours. Has MSNBC done that story? Has Fox?” he asked incredulously, before calling on the press to “wave an American flag” and “be proud of what we accomplished.”
The presentation from Hegseth and Caine at times felt like an extended deleted scene from Top Gun 3, a bewildering barrage of patriotic imagery — flags, bombs, brave pilots and the tears of their families as they returned home from their mission. You could almost hear the faint call of a bald eagle.
Caine’s description of the return of the bomber pilots, in particular, was emotive and touching, but did little to answer questions about Iran’s nuclear capabilities.
“The jets rejoined into a formation of four airplanes followed by a formation of three, and came up overhead Whiteman [air force base in Missouri] proudly in the traffic pattern, pitching out to land right over the base and landing to the incredible cheers of their families who sacrifice and serve right alongside their family members,” he said.
