Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth appeared this Thursday for the eighth time at the Pentagon since the start 47 days ago of the war launched by the United States and Israel against Iran. It was the first time he spoke to the press since the military blockade of the Strait of Hormuz ordered by President Donald Trump came into effect. After the failure of the talks held last weekend in Islamabad (Pakistan) to assess a ceasefire that expires next Wednesday, he joined on Monday the blockade that Tehran has been effectively applying for weeks in that bottleneck of the Persian Gulf through which a fifth of the hydrocarbons that supply the world circulate.
The Chief of Staff, Dan Caine, also spoke, offering details on how his men are implementing a blockade he described as “successful.” Hegseth warned Tehran, for his part, that the U.S. military is ready, “with weapons loaded,” he specified, to immediately resume “the war” if its negotiators do not accept the conditions offered by the negotiators sent by Washington, which in the first contact was led by Vice President J. D. Vance.
The Defense Secretary, who prefers to be called “Secretary of War,” despite Congress not having authorized such a name change, used his now classic bellicose rhetoric, his voluptuous description of U.S. military capabilities, and a speech mixing hyperbole with intimidation. “We know that [the Iranians] are digging up the launchers and missiles they have left, but we also know they are destroyed and lack the capacity to rebuild them. We, on the other hand, are rearming with more power than ever and with superior intelligence,” he said.
📹 Video | United States threatens to immediately resume war if Iran does not accept a pact https://t.co/ByZt0QZOX5 pic.twitter.com/8498sdymX3
— EL PAÍS (@el_pais) April 16, 2026
He referred several times to the “new” Iranian regime, emphasizing the word “new” to underline the beheading by bombing of dozens of its leaders. To those who replace them, he repeatedly urged to choose “wisely.” “The U.S. Navy controls what enters and leaves the strait, and will do so for as long as it deems necessary. You cannot control anything,” he warned the enemy, whom he portrayed as a defeated opponent who, however, remains standing in an asymmetric war that is now approaching two months. “That is not control. It is piracy. It is terrorism,” he added about the Iranian blockade of Hormuz.
The “wise” choice, he insisted, would be “to opt for negotiation.” “If not, we will bomb key energy infrastructures and Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent and our friends in that department will unleash Operation Economic Fury through sanctions. We can do it the easy way or the hard way,” he concluded.
After the Defense Secretary’s intervention, it was Caine’s turn, who used maps of the strait to offer tactical details of the U.S. blockade. On them, a line starting almost from the border with Pakistan marks the place where the U.S. Army keeps at bay, according to the Chief of Staff, Iranian ships or those originating from or destined for the country’s ports. According to the high command, “13 ship captains have made the wise decision to turn around” in the face of U.S. threats, which have not yet materialized. “It has not been necessary to board any of those ships,” he added.
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Caine also explained—before giving the floor to Admiral Brad Cooper, head of Central Command, making his debut in these regular Pentagon briefings—that the bulk of the operation is carried out by the “Arleigh Burke-class destroyers” deployed in the Middle East.
A “congested parking lot”
The Chief of Staff described them as “the sports car of the U.S. Navy, with its 170 meters long and almost 10 stories high from keel to mast.” “They are armed to the teeth,” he added, before describing Hormuz as “the congested parking lot of a shopping mall on a weekend” and praising the skill of the “sailors who make decisions in real time.” Of them, he highlighted in a somewhat puzzling digression, their youth. “The helmsman, on watch on the bridge, is usually between 18 and 19 years old, and is trusted to steer this warship through the parking lot of that supermarket without crashing. The navigation officer, who usually has just finished university, is the one who gives orders on where to take that warship to carry out the mission that the Secretary [of Defense] and the President [Trump] have entrusted to us.”
Earlier, Hegseth had again presented that mission as a holy war, and also resorted to biblical language in his argument to once again attack the “traditional” press covering the Pentagon. He compared it to the “Pharisees” who, according to what he heard last Sunday in his church sermon, did not want to recognize a miracle of Jesus, “who healed a man with a withered hand.” The Defense Secretary of the world’s leading power then added, in what seemed a new equation between Christ and Trump: “I thought: our traditional press is exactly like those Pharisees.”
Later, when it was time for questions, Hegseth avoided those “media that hate Trump, that let themselves be blinded by their political animosity against the president and do not recognize the brilliance of our American warriors.” He gave the floor exclusively to media from the MAGA universe (Make America Great Again), which have priority at the Pentagon after an adjustment of press participation rules that has been challenged in courts.
One reporter referred to the image published last Sunday by Trump in which, with the help of artificial intelligence, he presented himself as a messiah. The journalist did not ask about the controversy that publication sparked, which has put sectors of American Catholicism against the government, but wanted to know what Hegseth thought about an Iranian embassy having altered that image to show a figure that looks like Jesus Christ descending from the heavens and striking Trump. “It is a disgusting and far-from-reality video,” said the Defense Secretary.
Shortly before, Pope Leo XIV, who is traveling in Cameroon and has become the target of Trump and his Cabinet’s darts for his criticism of the Iran war, had condemned those “who manipulate religion and the name of God for their own military, economic, and political benefit, and cover the sacred with darkness and filth.”
