Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth has quickly become the public face of the U.S.-Israeli conflict with Iran and has cut an aggressive figure in his Pentagon briefings, speaking emphatically about his desire to “crush the enemy.”
“Iran stands alone and they are badly losing,” Hegseth told reporters Tuesday, describing Tehran’s theocratic regime as “barbaric savages” who are “desperate and scrambling.”
A devout Christian with ties to nationalist pastors, the secretary, and some of his commanders, have reportedly cast the bombing campaign in biblical terms, and Hegseth ended his most recent briefing by quoting from Psalm 144.
“Blessed be the Lord, my rock, who trains my hands for war and my fingers for battle,” he recited. “He is my loving God, and my fortress. My stronghold and my deliverer, my shield in whom I take refuge.”
As The Guardian has pointed out, the Afghanistan and Iraq veteran and former Fox News weekend host has a long history of fierce rhetoric against the Islamic Republic, viewing it as an existential threat against America and the West.
As early as 2014, Hegseth was appearing on the Fox News show The Kelly File to lambast Barack Obama over his administration’s Iran nuclear deal, which President Donald Trump subsequently withdrew from, accusing the then-cabinet of “willful blindness” in assuming “that somehow now we’re dealing with moderates in Iran.”
In 2017, he appeared in a video for the right-wing outlet PragerU in which he said: “Iraq’s neighbor to the east, and America’s mortal enemy, Iran, filled the political vacuum, while ISIS brutally exploited the security vacuum.”
A year later, Hegseth made an appearance at a media conference in Jerusalem hosted by the Arutz Sheva network and likened Iran to an octopus, describing the “many tentacles that the Iranian regime has in the world today, nefariously both for Israel and for the United States,” accusing it of building “a nuclear capacity which threatened the very existential existence of America.”
He again rebuked Obama over his “horrific” nuclear deal, insisting it only served to create “an inevitable path to nuclear weapons, funding the attunes of billions of dollars, the hateful terrorist Iranian regime seeking death to America and death to Israel.”
At the same event, he referred to Europe disparagingly as “a museum soon to be drowned out by radical Islam,” dismissed the idea of a two-state solution for Israel, and urged the country: “Buy the ticket, take your action, do what needs to be done here in Israel, because I truly believe this is a moment where America will have your back.”
When Trump assassinated Quds commander Qasem Soleimani on January 3 2020, Hegseth appeared on Fox Business to crow: “Iran should be worried today that maybe we will do something again. Maybe your second general is next if you continue to try to kill Americans… We are the top dog. You respond to us, not the other way around.”
Five days afterwards, he guested on Fox and Friends and said: “Whether we leave Iraq or not should be done on our terms and based on how we stare down Iran and their ability to get a nuclear bomb… right now could be the time to cripple their ability to do it.”
The same year, Hegseth published his book, American Crusade: Our Fight to Stay Free, in which he declared in a tone of seething vitriol: “America is not at war with Islam, but we are always at war with Islamists.
“Al-Qaeda, the Islamic State, the Taliban, Iran, and the likes are the latest manifestations of an Islamist movement that has no plans to ‘coexist.’
“They seek land, they seek power, they seek demographic and political advantages, and they actively seek the military means – especially nuclear weapons – to bring the West to its knees.”
In the same book, he was critical of Saudi Arabia, a key American ally that has been hit by Tehran’s retaliatory strikes during the present hostilities, saying its “oil money funds radical, anti-Western Islamic schools (madrassas) and mosques across.”
In another passage shining a light on his current thinking, he writes: “If you love America, you should love Israel.
“We share history, we share faith, and we share freedom… Israel is enemy number one for both Islamists and international leftists – which is reason alone to love it.”
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