Recommendations of the Editorial team
This week, Pete Hegseth had to testify before Congress lack of progress in the war against Iran responsible. However, the hearing was anything but harmonious.
The defense secretary was repeatedly pressed on the Trump administration’s shifting, contradictory justification for its decision to start the now months-long conflict. In particular, it was about the claim that the Middle East state was on the verge of producing a nuclear weapon.
“Do you know how much enriched uranium [entstanden ist]”After you tore up the JCPOA?” Rep. Ro Khanna (D-Calif.) asked Hegseth – referring to the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action, the nuclear deal the Obama administration negotiated with Iran that limited the country’s nuclear development options.
Hegseth and the uranium question
Hegseth claimed that the relevant information was classified. But according to a new report in the New York Times, there are reliable estimates of how much enriched uranium Iran began producing after Trump withdrew from the nuclear deal during his first term. Almost a decade after withdrawing from a negotiated agreement, Trump is now once again confronted with the long-term consequences of his own rashness.
According to the Times, Iran has accumulated 11 tons of enriched uranium in the eight years since Trump abolished the JCPOA. In the previous agreement, the limit set was around 300 kilograms. When the president withdrew from the deal in 2018, Iran did not have enough material for even a single bomb. Since then, the country has not only increased its stockpile exponentially, but also increased enrichment levels to levels just below the threshold required to build a nuclear weapon.
Still, the Trump administration’s claims remain dubious. It is said that the ongoing conflict was necessary because Iran posed an imminent nuclear threat. There is no evidence that the Iranians have actually developed a nuclear weapon. The argument that Iran was just weeks away from having a ready-to-use nuclear weapon when the US and Israeli attacks took place in February has been repeatedly undermined by the Trump administration itself. She had said the country’s nuclear capabilities had been “destroyed” in a series of targeted attacks last year. Hegseth reiterated this to lawmakers this week, adding that Iran’s “ambitions” to develop a nuclear weapon remain.
Uranium reserves in unknown hands
The real problem is not just that Iran has this uranium stockpile. The country may have relocated it to new locations unknown to the United States and international control authorities amid the conflict with the United States and Israel.
On Friday morning, during a regular Pentagon briefing, Hegseth snapped at his former Fox News colleague Jennifer Griffin. The network’s veteran Pentagon correspondent and senior security reporter asked whether the Pentagon had “certainty” that “none of this highly enriched uranium has been moved.”
Hegseth dodged the question and instead attacked Griffin personally. “Jennifer, you were one of the worst. The one who misrepresented the most and the most willfully,” the minister said.
Victory declared, war continues
This is how the Defense Department and the Trump administration handle virtually all questions about the war. You are right, everyone else is wrong. Victory is as good as won and yet the war must continue.