Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth was blasted by lawmakers on Capitol Hill on May 12 as they grilled him about the cost and true progress of the U.S. war with Iran.
And the Pentagon boss was not happy when pressed about Iran’s remaining missile munitions.
With a shaky ceasefire teetering, Hegseth and Gen. Dan Caine, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, appeared in back-to-back hearings before the House and Senate Appropriations subcommittees to defend the administration’s defense budget and the mounting cost of the conflict.
Two weeks earlier, the Pentagon claimed the war had cost $25 billion so far. Other U.S. officials with knowledge of internal assessments recently suggested the price tag was closer to $50 billion — and counting.
Sen. Chris Murphy, a Democrat from Connecticut, questioned Hegseth about newly leaked intelligence suggesting President Donald Trump has been lying about “obliterating” Iran’s missile capacity.
Murphy reminded Hegseth that the president boasted that 70 percent of Iran’s missiles had been destroyed before bringing up a new report revealing that number is only 30 percent.
When he asked Hegseth which figure was correct, the secretary shot back that he was “not validating leaked information that could be wrong or not wrong” while reminding lawmakers that the hearing was not a “classified setting.”
Hegseth ramps up battle with Kelly
Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth attacked Sen. Mark Kelly for allegedly sharing classified information. By: MEGA
Hegseth, who’s been touchy about revealing information regarding the ongoing conflict, also took offense when Sen. Mark Kelly, a Democrat from Arizona who’s also a retired naval aviator, astronaut and combat veteran, publicly revealed details Hegseth claimed were from a classified Pentagon briefing.
Kelly made the comments on Face the Nation when host Margaret Brennan asked about depleted U.S. munitions.
“The numbers are — I think it’s fair to say it’s shocking how deep we have gone into these magazines, because this president got our country into this without a strategic goal, without a plan, without a timeline, and because of that, we’ve expended a lot of munitions, and that means the American people are less safe, whether it’s a conflict in the Western Pacific with China or somewhere else in the world, the munitions are depleted,” Kelly said.
“You may have seen me ask the secretary of defense this question about how long it’s going to take to replenish. We’re talking about years,” Kelly added.
Kelly’s comments caught Hegseth’s attention, with the former Fox News host and Army National Guard combat veteran raging on X, “‘Captain’ Mark Kelly Strikes again. Now he’s blabbing on TV (falsely & dumbly) about a classified Pentagon briefing he received. Did he violate his oath… again? Department of War legal counsel will review.”
But Kelly challenged that claim, noting the information had already been shared publicly by Hegseth. “We had this conversation in a public hearing a week ago, and you said it would take ‘years’ to replenish some of these stockpiles,” Kelly wrote on X alongside a video of the Pentagon chief’s comments.
“That’s not classified, it’s a quote from you. This war is coming at a serious cost, and you and the president still haven’t explained to the American people what the goal is,” Kelly added alongside the clip of their tense exchange at a Senate hearing where Hegseth defended Trump’s 2027 defense budget.