WASHINGTON — Secretary of War Pete Hegseth on Wednesday defended Operation Epic Fury and assailed congressional critics of the Iran war during a House Armed Services Committee hearing in Washington. Hegseth told lawmakers that domestic political opposition posed a greater threat than foreign adversaries two months into the campaign.
"The biggest adversary we face at this point are the reckless, feckless, and defeatist words of congressional Democrats and some Republicans two months in," Hegseth said. He described President Trump as the best negotiator in the world.
Hegseth also asked the committee: "So what is the plan to actually turn all of this lethal, kinetic action into an improvement in the nuclear situation?"
Operation Epic Fury began on Feb. 28 and has cost an estimated $25 billion, mostly for munitions, Pentagon chief financial officer Jules Hurst III told the committee. The Trump administration might seek a supplemental military spending package of up to $200 billion to pay for the war.
Rep. Adam Smith said the Strait of Hormuz had been open before the war started and that negotiations were aimed at returning to that status quo, while Iran's most recent offer was to discuss nuclear issues later. Smith said Trump appeared to be relying on Jedi mind tricks to make Iran end its nuclear ambitions, and that every president prior to this one, including Trump in his first term, had prevented Iran from getting a nuclear weapon without going to war in Iran.
Rep. John Garamendi accused Hegseth and Trump of lying to the American public about the war from day one. "You have misled the public about why we are at war. You and the president have offered ever-changing reasons for this war," Garamendi said. He added: "The president has got himself and America stuck in the quagmire of another war in the Middle East. He's desperately trying to extricate himself from his own mistakes. It is in America's and indeed the world's interest that he succeed in that."
Hegseth responded that Garamendi's use of the word quagmire was an attempt to stain the troops, and said his own generation had served in a quagmire in Iraq and Afghanistan with nebulous missions and utopian nation-building that led to no results. "Shame on you calling this a quagmire," Hegseth said.
The current level of war expenditures could reduce Congress's leverage to enforce the War Powers Resolution's 60-day limit on conflicts without its approval.