Pete Hegseth, who was accused of misleading President Donald Trump about the war with Iran through “dangerously exaggerated” statements, because of which Americans were made to bear the cost of the war in the form of high fuel prices, was called a “war criminal” and “despicable” by protesters when he tried to deliver his statement at a Senate hearing on Capitol Hill.
The confrontation unfolded during the second successive day of congressional testimony by Hegseth and General Dan Caine before the Senate Armed Services Committee, where lawmakers were examining the Pentagon’s colossal $1.45tn military budget submission, although proceedings rapidly descended into a bruising political and strategic reckoning over the US’s war against Tehran.
Senator Jack Reed, the committee’s ranking Democrat, launched an uncompromising assault on Hegseth’s stewardship of the conflict, accusing him of presenting Trump with a distorted battlefield narrative while concealing the war’s deteriorating realities and its mounting domestic consequences.
Reed argued that American families, already battered by escalating fuel prices following the closure of the strategically critical Strait of Hormuz, were now subsidising a war “they wanted nothing to do with and have gained nothing from”.
Reed declared that Hegseth’s proclamations of triumph were detached from reality because Iran’s hardline regime remained entrenched, its enriched uranium stockpiles endured, and its nuclear programme retained operational viability despite weeks of devastating bombardment and military attrition.
He further accused the defence secretary of functioning less as an independent strategic adviser than as a political loyalist who merely echoed what Trump wished to hear while American troops continued to face casualties and mounting battlefield peril.
The Rhode Island senator also denounced Hegseth’s incendiary rhetoric, particularly remarks rejecting “stupid rules of engagement” and advocating “no mercy” towards Iranians, which Reed warned bordered on language associated with war crimes and risked further inflaming an already catastrophic conflict.
He castigated the Pentagon chief for prioritising ideological crusades inside the military establishment, including restructuring chaplain services, cancelling flu vaccine requirements, restricting educational participation and dismissing senior commanders allegedly on grounds linked to race or gender, while the war itself drifted into a dangerous stalemate.
Hegseth responded combatively, condemning Democrats and “some Republicans” as “reckless, feckless and defeatist”, while insisting that the Iranian campaign represented a historic strategic success which had confronted a threat no previous administration possessed the courage to challenge.
Yet his defiance encountered further resistance from senators Kirsten Gillibrand and Richard Blumenthal, both of whom asserted that the American public overwhelmingly opposed the unauthorised war and rejected the administration’s triumphalist narrative.