Hegseth says US is ‘locked and loaded’ to finish job of destroying Iran energy grid

Iran’s energy infrastructure is “not destroyed yet” and the US is “locked and loaded” to finish the job, Pete Hegseth, the defense secretary, said on Thursday as he called many of the press corps gathered the moral equivalent of the Pharisees who conspired to destroy Jesus Christ.

Hegseth’s comments from the Pentagon podium came as a naval blockade of Iranian ports began this week and he called on Tehran to accept a nuclear deal or face consequences for its remaining infrastructure, power generation and energy industry.

“We are reloading with more power than ever before, and better intelligence, even more importantly, better intelligence than ever before,” he said.

“You are digging out your remaining launchers and missiles with no ability to replace them. You can dig out for now. Can’t reconstitute, but we can,” he also said about Iran’s military leadership.

The choice facing Iran, he said, was straightforward. “We prefer to do it the nice way, through a deal led by our great vice-president and negotiating team, or we can do it the hard way.”

On Iran’s nuclear program, he said: “The war department will ensure that Iran never has a nuclear weapon. Never.”

Gen Dan Caine, chair of the joint chiefs of staff, confirmed that the blockade, which covers all ships regardless of nationality entering or leaving Iranian ports, distinct from a full closure of the strait of Hormuz, has been in force for more than 24 hours and that more than 10,000 sailors, marines and aircrew are enforcing it.

He explained how the US navy would transmit a message to ships that say “do not attempt to breach the blockade” and “turn around or prepare to be boarded”. He said that message had been “executed now 13 times” since the blockade began, and that none of the ships had been boarded.

Recalling a sermon from the previous Sunday, Hegseth reached for a biblical comparison by invoking the Pharisees. The Pharisees, he explained, were the religious authorities of ancient Israel at the time of Jesus – and the chief antagonists of Christ. In the Gospel of Mark, he explained, they watch Jesus heal a man’s withered hand on the Sabbath, not moved by what they have seen, but already calculating how to use it against him.

“As the passage ends, the Pharisees went out and immediately held counsel against him – how to destroy him,” Hegseth said. “I sat there in church and I thought: our press are just like these Pharisees. The hardened hearts of our press are calibrated only to impugn.”

As evidence, he said the press corps had “bent over backwards” to characterize the Biden administration’s 2021 Afghanistan withdrawal as “the greatest airlift in American history”.

The phrase, however, did not originate in newsrooms: Joe Biden himself first described the operation as “one of the biggest airlifts in history”. The formulation was later twisted by rightwing figures like Fox News commentator Mark Levin, who would paraphrase one week later by saying he called it the “greatest airlift in American history” live on air. Lauren Boebert, a Republican Colorado representative, would write a letter to the Biden administration in 2022 also repeating the “greatest airlift” in history line again.

Hegseth did not acknowledge the phrase’s origins.

“Sometimes,” he told the room of reporters, “it’s hard to figure out what side some of you are actually on.”