As U.S. officials faced widening concern that strikes on Iran could take on a long, Iraq-like character, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth told reporters Monday that the operation is not “endless” and is not “a so-called regime-change war.” Speaking ahead of further fighting, Hegseth also warned that more American casualties are likely in the weeks ahead, even as the administration has framed its campaign around the elimination of specific threats rather than a prolonged occupation-style conflict.
Hegseth’s comments came as he and Joint Chiefs chairman Gen. Dan Caine described the mission in terms of defined objectives. Hegseth said the operation had a “decisive mission” with goals that included eliminating Iranian ballistic-missile threats, destroying the country’s navy, and ensuring “no nukes,” according to his remarks at a separate news conference.
Administration officials have pointed to multiple drivers for the strikes. While the Trump administration has cited Iran’s nuclear ambitions as a central concern, officials increasingly have also emphasized Iran’s ballistic missiles as a key reason to launch attacks and as an opportunity to target the country’s leadership. The broader administration justification described the timing and purpose as grounded in stalled negotiations and the view that Iran’s conventional missile and drone capabilities posed a “very clear, colossal threat,” with Trump describing Iran’s conventional missile program as “growing rapidly and dramatically.”
Even as U.S. officials tried to delineate the campaign’s scope, they did not offer a clear exit plan or specific signals that the conflict would end soon. The AP report said Trump, Hegseth and Caine had not suggested an end point, and it noted that the killing of Iranian Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei had cast doubt on the future leadership structure of Iran and contributed to broader instability across the region. Caine said the U.S. military buildup in the Middle East in decades would expand further, adding that the commander in the region “will receive additional forces even today.”
The warnings about future casualties were tied to a toll already reported by U.S. officials. Six American troops were killed, all Army soldiers and part of the same logistics unit in Kuwait, a U.S. official told AP on condition of anonymity because the official was not authorized to comment publicly. Capt. Tim Hawkins, a spokesman for U.S. Central Command, said 18 American service members also had been seriously wounded.
Hegseth addressed questions about how the six deaths occurred, saying an Iranian weapon made it past allied air defenses and, in that instance, struck a tactical operations center that was fortified. The report also described an additional indicator of escalation and the hazards of the conflict as it spread into wider operations. U.S. Central Command said ally Kuwait “mistakenly shot down” three American fighter jets during a combat mission while Iranian aircraft, ballistic missiles and drones were attacking, and it said all six pilots ejected safely from the F-15E Strike Eagles and were in stable condition.
Questions about whether U.S. forces were operating directly inside Iran also did not produce a clear public answer. When asked if there were “boots on the ground now in Iran,” Hegseth said, “No, but we’re not going to go into the exercise of what we will or will not do.” He also said it would be “foolishness” to expect U.S. officials to publicly detail “exactly how far we’ll go,” while Trump told the New York Post that he was not ruling out U.S. forces in Iran if they were “necessary.”
In Washington, Trump said the mission was expected to take four to five weeks but also said the U.S. had the capability to go longer. Secretary of State Marco Rubio told reporters at the Capitol that the U.S. “will do this as long as it takes to achieve” its objectives and warned that “the hardest hits are yet to come from the U.S. military.” Hegseth separately described the timeline as variable, offering examples including “Four weeks, two weeks, six weeks,” and saying it could “move up” or “move back.”
Hegseth also offered the administration’s justification for the strikes, saying he did not point to any imminent nuclear threat from Iran and reiterating that last June’s actions by the U.S. and Israel “obliterated their nuclear program to rubble.” Instead, he cited what he described as Iran’s missile and drone efforts to create a conventional shield for “nuclear blackmail ambitions,” saying “Our bases, our people, our allies, all in their crosshairs.” He added that, during negotiations before the attack, Iranian officials were “stalling,” despite what Hegseth described as having “every chance to make a peaceful and sensible deal,” and he framed the operation as responding to threats he said Iran posed.
On the operational details shared publicly, Caine said the U.S. used B-2 stealth bombers and described the mission as involving a 37-hour round trip. He said penetrating bombs were dropped on Iranian underground facilities, while the AP report said nuclear sites were not specified among target categories listed by U.S. Central Command. Caine also referenced cyber tools, saying the U.S. “effectively disrupted communications and sensor networks” that left the adversary without the ability to coordinate or respond effectively. Without giving specifics, he said the U.S. delivered “synchronized and layered effects” designed to disrupt, degrade, deny and destroy Iran’s ability to conduct sustained combat operations.
Caine said Trump gave the go-ahead order for the strikes at 3:38 p.m. EST on Friday, and the AP report said Trump made the decision while aboard Air Force One traveling to Texas with Republican Sens. Ted Cruz and John Cornyn and actor Dennis Quaid.