Hegseth and Caine Delve Into Details but Not Results of Iranian Strikes

Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth and Gen. Dan Caine, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, on Thursday offered the Trump administration’s most detailed descriptions yet of the planning and execution of U.S. airstrikes on Iranian nuclear facilities.

But Mr. Hegseth and General Caine gave no new assessments of the state of Iran’s nuclear program or the damage to the sites. Both men referred those questions to the nation’s spy agencies.

Neither man repeated President Trump’s assertion that the strikes had “obliterated” the Iranian facilities, even as they pushed back against a preliminary classified Defense Intelligence Agency report that said the bombings set back the country’s nuclear program by only a few months.

Asked about the movement of enriched uranium from the Fordo site, the deepest underground facility, Mr. Hegseth said he was “not aware” of any intelligence that “anything” was out of place. He implied, but did not say, that the enriched uranium was in place in Fordo.

Mr. Hegseth began what was only his second ever news conference at the Pentagon by saying that the news media, in his view, had not been kind to Mr. Trump. “Searching for scandals, you miss historic moments like recruiting at the Pentagon, historic levels in the Army, the Air Force and the Navy.”

Mr. Hegseth has fashioned himself as an amplifier of Mr. Trump, as part of his role as defense secretary. He took a combative tone at Thursday’s news conference, singling out reporters who have covered the Pentagon for years under successive administrations, both Republican and Democratic, and complained that they were not properly cheering for the one he represented.