Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth shut down a question from a reporter on Tuesday, rebutting the \u201cfalse premise\u201d that Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu could pull President Donald Trump back into open conflict with Iran.<\/p>\n
The tense exchange came at the end of the Pentagon press briefing<\/a> on the Iran conflict, when Zero Hedge White House correspondent Liam Cosgrove asked a lengthy question citing comments<\/a> he attributed to Netanyahu and Israeli\u2019s Mossad chief on the country\u2019s \u201cintent\u201d to continue fighting \u201cuntil the Iranian government collapses.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cThey\u2019re referring to the government that President Trump has brokered a ceasefire with and is working on a lasting peace in the region with. And so that\u2019s something many Americans, especially American farmers, are hoping he does get to, a lasting peace,\u201d Cosgrove said.<\/p>\n He continued: \u201cSo if President Trump is successful in that and the Israelis are explicitly stating their intent to continue fighting at a later date, how can you assure America doesn\u2019t get roped back into a war if that comes, and secondly, with Netanyahu comfortable tweeting something like that out and also Netanyahu has continued bombing Lebanon despite President Trump explicitly \u2013\u201d<\/p>\n Before the the reporter could finish, Hegseth cut in.<\/p>\n \u201cI would say your question is based on the false premise that somehow President Trump is being pulled in by Prime Minister Netanyahu to any of these actions,\u201d the defense secretary said.<\/p>\n Before Cosgrove could counter, Hegseth quipped: \u201cThat\u2019s where you\u2019re going.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cJust to be clear,\u201d he said. \u201cPresident Trump has led at every step of this based on his view of American interests and America First. And we\u2019re grateful that Israelis have been very capable partners at many steps of this and they may have some objectives that, at times, that are slightly different than ours, but there\u2019s only one hand on the wheel ultimately directing this, whether it\u2019s Project Freedom or previously Operation Epic Fury, and it\u2019s President Trump.\u201d<\/p>\n He continued: \u201cSo we\u2019re grateful for their input, their insights, the existential nature of the threat they face from an Iranian bomb, the capabilities that they can bring to that. But ultimately, the coordination will happen with the leadership of President Trump.\u201d<\/p>\n With that he ended the briefing.<\/p>\n Watch above via Fox News.<\/p>\n The post \u2018False Premise\u2019: Pete Hegseth Shuts Down Question About Israel Defying Trump<\/a> first appeared on Mediaite<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth shut down a question from a reporter on Tuesday, rebutting the \u201cfalse premise\u201d that…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":58111,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[16469],"tags":[244,12,34980,34979,18],"class_list":{"0":"post-58110","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-benjamin-netanyahu","8":"tag-benjamin-netanyahu","9":"tag-donald-trump","10":"tag-false-premise","11":"tag-liam-cosgrove","12":"tag-pete-hegseth"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@people\/116522869238643208","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/people\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/58110","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/people\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/people\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/people\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/people\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=58110"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/people\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/58110\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/people\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/58111"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/people\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=58110"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/people\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=58110"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/people\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=58110"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}