Inside Pentagon Briefings During the Iran War
In the weeks since US and Israeli strikes on Iran, another battle is raging. This one is for the narrative. It is taking place at the heart of American military power.
A Battle for the Narrative
I have been inside the Pentagon press briefings from week one. US Defence Secretary Pete Hegseth leads them. He is a former Army National Guard Major and a Fox News pundit.
TV-Style Monologues at the Podium
Hegseth has brought his TV-style monologue to the Pentagon podium. The briefings are chest-thumping affairs. They revel in portrayals of American military supremacy.On Wednesday, Hegseth said the US had scored “a capital V military victory”. At another briefing, he said the US had dealt “death and destruction from the sky all day long”.
Getting to the Truth
However, getting to the truth takes deeper interrogation. A tenuous ceasefire is now in place. It is already being tested. So what has the US really achieved? And at what cost?Little progress has been made on the nuclear issue. President Trump’s core war goal was to deny Iran a nuclear weapon. Iran says it never planned to build one. This had also been a years-long objective of US-led diplomacy. Trump believed the 2015 nuclear deal was too weak.
