There is a particular kind of American who believes that wisdom consists of doing nothing, that restraint is its own strategy, and that the world’s problems will politely wait outside the door while we tend our domestic garden. This person is currently very loud on social media. He is not, it turns out, governing.
Pete Hegseth is governing.
He opened his Pentagon briefing on Monday with NATO, not with Iran. The alliance had just committed to spending five percent of GDP on defense, and Hegseth wanted Americans to understand what that meant before he got to the bombs.
“Other presidents tried to do it,” he said. “Other presidents talked about it.” America First begins with burden-sharing. When allies pay, American power becomes sustainable rather than subsidized.
Then came Iran. “President Trump directed the most complex and secretive military operation in history,” Hegseth told the briefing room, “and it was a resounding success.”
His case came as a cascade of assessments read aloud like a prosecutor laying out exhibits. IAEA Director-General Rafael Grossi called the damage “enormous.”
The IDF chief of staff said that Iran’s nuclear program had been set back “by years. I repeat, years.” CIA Director John Radcliffe confirmed intelligence from a “historically reliable and accurate source” that key facilities “were destroyed and would have to be rebuilt over the course of years.”
Even Iran’s own foreign ministry spokesman conceded the installations were “badly damaged, that’s for sure.” Hegseth’s gloss: “I’m sure that’s an understatement.”
Is he right? A preliminary DIA report, leaked within days, suggested lower confidence than the administration claimed.
Hegseth went after the report’s methodology: It was produced a day and a half after the strikes, carried low confidence, acknowledged data gaps, and relied on what he called “linchpin assumptions.” His point: “If you’re wrong, everything else is wrong.” Legitimate. Not the whole story.
Part of his frustration is well worth taking seriously: “How many stories have been written about how hard it is to fly a plane for 36 hours? What it’s like to man a Patriot battery? How hard is it to refuel midair?”
B-2 bombers, F-35 pilots carry out operations as part of Epic Fury strikes on Iran
The strikes required B-2 bombers on missions of extraordinary length and F-35 pilots threading munitions down ventilation shafts at hardened underground sites.
“The first munition took the cap off,” Hegseth explained, “and the other five went down the center hole.” No other country on Earth runs an operation like that. “How about we celebrate that?” he asked. “How about we talk about how special America is that only we have these capabilities?”
It’s more chest-thumping than the moment requires. But the underlying argument is coherent: American action, when it comes, should be decisive. It should accomplish in days what decades of diplomacy couldn’t.
“This was a historically successful attack,” he said, “and it gives us a chance to have peace, a chance to have a deal, and an opportunity to prevent a nuclear Iran, which is something President Trump talked about for 20 years and no other presidents had the courage to actually do.”
Which brings us to the allies and their instructive recent education in the cost of half-measures.
British Prime Minister Keir Starmer had refused to allow the United States to use Diego Garcia, the joint British-American base in the Indian Ocean, for the strikes. The decision was framed as prudence. A responsible ally declining to be dragged into someone else’s escalation. Yet within days, Iranian drones targeted a British military base in Cyprus.
You don’t get to opt out of a conflict by declining to participate. Iran didn’t consult Britain’s preferences before selecting its targets. Deterrence isn’t a policy you can apply selectively, present for the benefits and absent for the risks. Starmer got both anyway, just in the wrong order.
Saudi Arabia has been instructive in the opposite direction. Riyadh was initially cool to the strikes, protective of its complicated relationship with Tehran. Then the bombs fell, the damage assessments came in, and the Saudis adjusted their position with a speed that suggested their earlier reluctance had been more tactical than principled.
When American power demonstrates that it’s real, the regional calculus shifts. When it hesitates, the same countries that urged caution quietly wonder whether Washington can be counted on at all.
The isolationist critique runs on three claims:
Congress didn’t authorize the action – true, and this tradition of executive overreach stretches back decades through administrations of both parties.
Escalation could spiral – possible, though Iran’s own escalatory ladder, built through proxies and missiles and a nuclear program that doesn’t pause for American reluctance, seems curiously absent from this accounting.
The US should focus on China – an argument that would carry more force if Iran’s missile technology weren’t already flowing to the adversaries we claim to prioritize.
Hegseth’s most revealing moment came in the Q&A, when a reporter pressed him on the conflicting intelligence. “Do you have a top secret clearance, sir?” The exasperation was real. “The first reports are almost always wrong,” he said. “They’re almost always incomplete.” True. Also not sufficient reason to wave away oversight entirely.
What he's selling is American confidence. The belief that capability deployed decisively is its own argument. "We don't play your little games," he told the press corps. It's a posture that will be vindicated by events or exposed by them, with little middle ground.
Britain learned the hard way that there’s no neutral corner in this fight. The question is whether that lesson travels to other capitals before Iran forces it again.
“If you want to know what’s going on at Fordow,” Hegseth said, “you’d better go there and get a big shovel because no one’s under there right now.” Maybe. The shovels will eventually tell us.
What Hegseth still owes the public is the strategic case for what comes next: clear objectives and defined limits, the kind of accountability democracies require when they go to war. He’s made the emotional argument for what America did. That’s the easier half.