The hosts of MS NOW’s “Morning Joe” slammed Pete Hegseth’s comments at a press conference Wednesday about the Iran War, calling the Secretary of Defense’s summary a “ridiculous assessment” of the conflict so far.
On Tuesday, the same day that President Trump vowed on social media that “a whole civilization will die tonight, never to be brought back again,” the U.S. announced it had accepted a ceasefire deal with Iran negotiated by leaders in Pakistan. During his subsequent press conference, Hegseth characterized the ceasefire as President Trump choosing “mercy” rather than destruction, which “Morning Joe” co-host Jonathan Lemire pushed back against.
“Just a ridiculous assessment there from the Secretary of Defense,” Lemire said. “The president’s post yesterday was met with fierce pushback from world leaders, from the Pope. We know that Trump was lobbied all day by other heads of state telling him to back off, including those from the Gulf, saying, ‘If you go after them like this, we know we’re going to get the front of the retaliation. This is putting us all at great risk.’ The president seemed eager to latch on to this proposal from the Pakistani mediators.”
“He realized he had backed himself into a corner and needed some way out and some way to declare victory,” Lemire continued. “But the Strait of Hormuz now is under more of Iran’s control than it was at the start of this war. That inherently makes this a defeat for the United States.”
You can watch the full “Morning Joe” segment yourself below.
Lemire additionally disputed both Trump and Hegseth’s claims that a new regime has been put in charge of Iran because of the war this year.
“They inflicted some damage on the regime, no doubt. Yes, they killed off some specific names. But it’s the same institutions. It’s the same larger structure. It’s still in charge,” Lemire explained, noting also that “nothing has improved for the Iranian people at this point in the war.” The “Morning Joe” host’s thoughts were echoed by MS NOW Senior National Security reporter David Rohde, who looked back on the military objectives that Hegseth laid out at the start of the Iran War.
“I think there were multiple false statements and claims that Secretary Hegseth made,” Rohde said. “They did not destroy Iran’s ability to project power in the Strait of Hormuz, and that is the key victory for Iran here. Iran still controls the Strait of Hormuz. There’s talk of a toll for Iran that could generate as much as $100 billion a year for the regime. That’s the equivalent to the total amount of oil sales Iran had last year. They can rebuild all these things.”
“I think the threat to destroy Iran’s civilization backfired massively for the United States,” Rohde concluded. “We could not retake the Strait of Hormuz because we did not have European ships backing us. We should have created a broad international coalition as George H.W. Bush did in Kuwait and they didn’t follow that approach and we were not strong enough to take the Strait of Hormuz or completely defeat Iran.”
