Hegseth defends Iran attack as Khamenei claims victory
Two versions of reality: according to Iran's Ayatollah Khamenei – his country has delivered a 'severe slap to the face of America'.
Half a world away – the US Defence Secretary Pete Hegseth insisted strikes on Iranian nuclear facilities had been a 'historic success', and blasted the media for suggesting otherwise.
Israel's prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu also declared victory – and said his country hoped for 'widening peace agreements'.
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Daily Mail
16 minutes ago
- Daily Mail
Fox News star Brit Hume turns on former colleague Pete Hegseth for outburst over Iran bombing intel
Brit Hume jumped to the defense of his Fox News colleague Jennifer Griffin and slammed former co-worker Pete Hegseth for their clash over the Iran bombing. Hegseth clashed with much of the press in his briefing on the strikes after several outlets claimed they had only set back Iran's nuclear facilities by months rather than decimating them. However, he shared particular scorn for Fox's National Security Correspondent Griffin, saying: 'Jennifer, you've been about the worst, the one who misrepresents the most intentionally what the President says.' Hume, a longtime fixture at the network, defended Griffin in a week where Tucker Carlson joined the parade of former Fox News anchors giving friendly fire her way. 'I have then, have had and still have, the greatest regard for her. The attack on her was unfair,' Hume said, criticizing Hegseth. He said the attack was not deserved and Griffin's 'professionalism, knowledge and experience at the Pentagon is unmatched.' Hegseth, a former weekend host for Fox News before being tapped to run the Department of Defense for Trump, was openly hostile to the media during a Thursday morning press conference at the Pentagon. The entire briefing was seemingly held to push back on reports indicating that Operation Midnight Hammer - the name of the weekend bombing mission - was ineffective. Griffin, a veteran Pentagon reporter who's been with the channel for decades, asked Hegseth to clarify whether Iran's already enriched uranium was destroyed by the U.S. strikes. 'There's nothing that I've seen that suggests that what we didn't hit exactly what we wanted to hit in those locations,' the Pentagon secretary responded cagily. Griffin then asked: 'That's not the question, though. It's about highly enriched uranium. Do you have certainty that all the highly enriched uranium was inside the Fordow mountain, or some of it?' 'There were satellite photos that showed more than a dozen trucks there two days in advance? Are you certain none of that highly enriched uranium was moved?' 'Of course, we're watching every single aspect,' Hegseth responded before bizarrely turning on his old colleague. 'But Jennifer, you've been about the worst, the one who misrepresents the most intentionally what the President says.' The veteran Pentagon reporter immediately interjected, highlighting to Hegseth how she was the first journalist to reveal how the operation targeted the nuclear facility's ventilation shafts and more. 'I was the first to report about the ventilation shafts on Saturday night, and in fact, I was the first to describe the B-2 bombers, the refueling, the entire mission, with great accuracy,' the Fox News correspondent retorted. 'So I take issue with that,' she added. Satellite imagery showed trucks arriving at the Fordow nuclear facility just days before the strikes, leading to questions about whether the Iranians moved their enriched uranium to another location before the U.S. bombs were dropped. 'I'm not aware of any intelligence that I've reviewed that says things were not where they were supposed to be — moved or otherwise,' Hegseth later told another reporter. Multiple sources familiar with an initial battle damage assessment told CNN and the New York Times that the strikes on Iran's nuclear facilities only set back the country's nuclear program by a few months. 'It is preliminary,' Hegseth said of the leaked assessment on Thursday. 'It points out it is not coordinated with the intelligence community at all, there is low confidence in this report, there are gaps.' The bigger issue, according to Hegseth, is the unpatriotic media. 'You cheer against Trump so hard, it's like in your DNA and blood,' Hegseth charged the reporters in the room. 'You have to cheer against the efficacy of these strikes.' 'Your people are trying to leak and spin that it wasn't successful, it's irresponsible.' The Pentagon secretary also invoked statements from CIA Director John Ratcliffe and Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard. Both intelligence chiefs put out statements on Wednesday night stating that the damage done to Iran's nuclear sites will take 'years' to rebuild. 'CIA can confirm that a body of credible intelligence indicates Iran's nuclear program has been severely damaged by recent targeted strikes,' Hegseth said. It came just days after Carlson admitted he wanted her out when he worked at Fox News, referring to her as 'the deepest of the deep state.' As Trump announced a ceasefire - one Carlson reacted to by tweeting: 'Thank God' - he released an episode of his show where he continued to question his ex-employers coverage, zeroing in on Griffin, the network's Chief National Security Correspondent. 'Jennifer Griffin is, even by the standards of Pentagon employees, she's not technically an employee of the Pentagon. She's a shill, obviously, for the deepest of the deep states. But she's like a parody. She's like parody. It's like the whole thing,' Carlson said. Carlson and fellow former Fox host Clayton Morris joked about Griffin's water-carrying for the 'deep state.' 'The crazy thing is Jen Griffin is a liar, but also very liberal, true Trump hater, to the point where I complained about her and I really tried not to complain about other people at Fox when I worked there,' he said. 'She was discrediting the channel, she was such a Trump hatter, and it was emotional.' He even went to one of his superiors at the network and suggested Griffin wasn't helping. Carlson said he asked: 'She's an idiot. She doesn't tell the truth. She misleads our viewers. And she's like a screaming liberal who hates Trump, who our viewers love. So what are we getting out of this?' The response he got from the network was that 'you could not touch Jennifer Griffin.' Morris noted that Griffin has an office at the Pentagon, suggesting she may be presenting bias in her coverage based on how close to her sources she is.
Scottish Sun
41 minutes ago
- Scottish Sun
Trump reveals what mystery trucks at nuke site were REALLY doing before blitz… destroying claims Iran rushed uranium out
URANIUM DELIRIUM Trump reveals what mystery trucks at nuke site were REALLY doing before blitz… destroying claims Iran rushed uranium out DONALD Trump has revealed what the mystery trucks at Iran's Fordow nuke plant were doing there before he blitzed the base. Satellite pictures captured the lorries at the underground bunker complex just hours before the US hammered it with B-2 stealth bombers in the "historically successful" Operation Midnight Hammer. 4 The Fordow plant before and after the the US bombed the site Credit: Reuters 4 The moment the missile hit the earth in the test footage 4 Trucks at the plant on June 19 - days before the US bombed it Credit: Getty 4 Defence Secretary Pete Hegseth and Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Air Force Gen. Dan Caine give a briefing on Operation Midnight Hammer Credit: Getty Some had speculated online those workers had been trying to remove the enriched uranium from the base. But Trump has posted on social media after a Pentagon briefing today and said the trucks were concrete workers. Iranian workers had desperately tried to cover the vents of the complex in concrete in the hours before the US bombed. The bunker buster bombs hit their targets just hours later and flew down the shafts and obliterated the facility. Trump said: "The cars and small trucks at the site were those of concrete workers trying to cover up the top of the shafts. "Nothing was taken out of facility. Would take too long, too dangerous, and very heavy and hard to move!" Defence Secretary Pete Hegseth revealed the Iranian's desperate attempts during the briefing held with Dan "Raizin" Caine, the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. Caine talked through previously unseen footage of the 30,000lb GBU-57 "bunker buster" weapon being tested. One of the bombs can be seen in slo-mo hitting a dirt target, travelling through a thick layer of earth, and then exploding in a cavity below it in the new footage. The footage came as part of the administration's efforts to prove Operation Midnight Hammer blitz on Fordow "obliterated" the plant. Caine also revealed information about the planning for the mission including that one person in the Defence Threat Reduction Agency (DTRA) had been solely studying the underground bunker complex for 15 years. That person, whose identity is classified, had effectively been able give a design of the base for the Air Force to then design a mission around. Caine said that the 30,000lb bombs had been designed with Iran's nuclear program in mind and from studying Fordow. He said: "The weapons were designed, planned, and delivered to achieve the objections in the mission space." Developing the bomb had, at one point, been using the most supercomputer hours in the United States. Caine said he didn't have intelligence on the damage, but could confirm the bombs had released properly, hit their target, and exploded. One of the pilots told Caine after the mission: "This is the brightest explosion I have ever seen, it literally looked like daylight". The Pentagon briefing on the operation came just hours after Iran's fanatical supreme leader broke his silence after not being seen in a week. Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, 86, claimed victory over Israel and America despite his country being hammered in the "12 Day War". Khamenei is hiding away in a bunker deep below ground despite the ceasefire as he fears being assassinated by secret agents, the New York Times reports. The supreme leader was seen in a video sitting in front of the same brown curtain - presumably still cowardly hiding in his bunker - as he had last week. On Israel, he ludicrously claimed Iran had almost crushed the country and the government in Tel Aviv was on the verge of collapse. That's despite the IDF controlling the skies over Tehran, assassinating dozens of top generals and nuclear scientists, and destroying dozens of valuable missile batteries in just 12 days of fighting. On America, Khamenei claimed to have given the country a "severe slap" to its face and that it had "gained nothing" from the attack on Iran's nuke plants. The Ayatollah said: 'The American regime entered a direct war because it felt that if it did not, the Zionist regime would be completely destroyed. "However, it gained no achievements from this war. 'Here, too, the Islamic Republic emerged victorious, and in return, the Islamic Republic delivered a severe slap to America's face.' Khamenei also bizarrely claimed his rockets had hit the American's Al Udeid Air Base in Qatar, despite his forces giving advanced warning so the rockets could be all shot down. The supreme leader was last seen a week ago in a video message, but it's two weeks since he appeared to his people in the flesh. Stay up to date with the latest on Israel vs Iran with The Sun's live blog below...
Times
an hour ago
- Times
I've never been to Iran. Why has the crisis left me in despair?
I've spent the past two weeks glued to my phone. Not reading the news — inhaling it. Comment sections, maps, Telegram channels, satellite images, video essays of analysis and speculation. It's compulsive and nauseating, and I can't stop. Iran is under threat of war again, and I feel like I can't breathe. I'm half Iranian. My father left Iran in the 1960s, long before the revolution, not as a refugee, but simply as a young man who wanted to live somewhere else. The way I moved to London in my twenties, he moved to Europe in his. Growing up, Iran was always both close and just out of reach for me. My father made a life in Germany — he met my mother and raised my sister and I there, and kept us at a careful distance from the country he came from. There were practical reasons for this: under Iranian law, children of Iranian men are automatically citizens. We can't enter on tourist visas, can't renounce our citizenship — and in times of political instability dual nationals are at risk. He didn't want us to feel tethered to a country that could make life harder, a place that came with political baggage and a passport we'd never be able to shake.
