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Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth was the Trump administration’s frontman for waging war on Iran during weeks of kinetic operations aimed at decimating its nuclear threat.
Since President Trump signed a memorandum of understanding (MOU) with Iran to end the war, without securing significant concessions on its missile or nuclear stockpiles, Hegseth has said little about the shift in strategy — as Vice President Vance takes the spotlight in defending the tenuous diplomacy.
The public positioning of the top Trump advisers reflects reporting on their private counsel to the commander-in-chief, with Trump saying in March that Hegseth was “the first one to speak” up in support of military operations against Iran. Vance, Trump has said, was notably less enthusiastic about the war.
Anthony Constantini, policy director at the Bull Moose Project, a conservative advocacy group, said Hegseth was the “bad cop” during the active operations against Iran and now Vance is playing the role of “good cop.”
“Hegseth’s job” is to present Trump with military options against Tehran, Constantini told The Hill, adding it would be “odd” if the Pentagon chief were “constantly talking” about the agreement.
“He is not the guy who is leading the negotiations,” he said.
But Yvonne Chiu, a professor of strategy and policy at the U.S. Naval War College, said Hegseth should be engaged in discussing the deal and corresponding military strategy to maintain stability in the region.
“He’s really interested in either the kind of very showy kinetic actions, like bombings, daring flight missions, and special operations and that stuff, or he’s interested in these internal culture wars within DOD, but he’s not interested in the hard work of all of these other things that Secretary of defense ought to care about, like force design and how to keep the peace, which is specifically relevant to Iran situation,” Chiu, who is also a Jeane Kirkpatrick Visiting Fellow at the American Enterprise Institute (AEI), said in an interview with The Hill.
She noted Hegseth is far from alone within the administration in staying silent about the deal. Talks mediated by Qatar and Pakistan are currently stuck on Iran’s control over the Strait of Hormuz, delaying potential progress on nuclear issues.
“I think because they realize that it’s not a great deal — doesn’t mean nothing good can come of it, but it’s not a good deal — and so I think the less attention they draw to it, the better, is the general attitude about it,” she said.
It’s been a stark shift from Hegseth and the Pentagon, which has returned to its pre-war routine of dispensing with press briefings that were routine under past administrations.
During the 38 days of U.S. and Israeli military strikes against Iran, which kicked off on Feb. 28 and concluded on April 8, Hegseth and the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Gen. Dan Caine, regularly briefed reporters, detailing the more than 13,000 strikes U.S. forces carried out inside Iran, the variety of targets hit in the country and assets the armed forces have relied on to carry out Operation Epic Fury.
When Hegseth has spoken about Iran since the MOU was signed on June 17, it has been to raise the possibility of resuming military operations.
On June 17, Hegseth said Trump’s deal was far superior to the Obama administration’s 2015 Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA), as the U.S. will now “make sure the military option is there.”
And before departing for Brussels, Belgium to meet with NATO counterparts last month, Hegseth warned that the U.S. military is ready to restart kinetic action against Iran if necessary.
“We will be prepared to recommence if, underneath the timeline of these talks, Iran does not do what it says it’s going to do, which is give up nuclear weapons, give up nuclear ambitions, give away their nuclear material, close nuclear facilities. Then the War Department is here and prepared to restart if we need to,” Hegseth told reporters. “We prefer not to, but we are prepared.”
But that was pretty much the end of Hegseth’s public input on the tenuous MOU, under which the U.S. and Iran have 60 days to broker a final peace deal that resolves the status of Tehran’s enriched uranium and frees up billions of dollars in frozen Iranian assets.
Both Hegseth and Trump have emphasized that the U.S. still has an enormous military presence surrounding Iran, which includes two aircraft carrier strike groups deployed to the Middle East.
Allison McManus, a managing director for the National Security and International Policy department at the left-leaning Center for American Progress (CAP), attributed part of Hegseth’s low visibility to not being involved in diplomatic talks, along with a general lack of good news to tout.
“I just think that there is not much, whether that’s Hegseth or Rubio or Witkoff or Trump himself, there’s not much that’s been positive to report, and I think with this administration, there is frankly…we’re going to see a desire to sort of move on,” McManus said in an interview with The Hill.
Jason Dempsey, who served more than two decades as an Army infantry officer, argued Hegseth was willing to speak early on in the war as the U.S. goals came across as “maximalist and unambiguous,” and it was “safe” to talk about putting more pressure on Iran.
Now that Trump is looking to strike a deal and end the conflict, Hegseth has little to gain by talking tough and risks contradicting a president who regularly shifts between belligerent threats and optimistic predictions of a diplomatic breakthrough, Dempsey, who is currently an Adjunct Senior Fellow of the National Security Human Capital Program at the Center for a New American Security (CNAS), told The Hill.
“Being willing to go on a limb on something that might directly reflect on the president was an aberration and an artifact of the post-Venezuela hubris that led the administration into this ill-conceived and poorly executed war with Iran,” Dempsey said. “His recent attempts to avoid being the face of the conflict may be the smartest thing he has done thus far.”
Hegseth is reverting to a “playbook he has used fairly effectively thus far: throw red meat to the MAGA faithful every few weeks in a way that keeps him in the headlines (rescinding the flu vaccine mandate, purging religious classifications, etc.), issues that don’t risk him going sideways with Trump,” he added.
Hegseth’s office did not respond to The Hill’s request for comment.
McManus, of CAP, said Trump and the White House also see “less of a role” for Hegseth to play in speaking publicly about the MOU given that military operations against Iran are not the “primary mode any longer of engaging” with the Islamic Republic.
“I think if Trump wanted Hegseth to be doing daily briefings, whether or not Hegseth agreed with what’s in the MOU, he would be doing the daily briefings,” she said.
Hegseth has maintained a public presence, on Thursday speaking at Meridian Hill park in Washington, D.C., where he praised the National Guard’s role at the D.C. Safe and Beautiful Task Force event and slammed the three-dozen protestors blaring sirens nearby.
“This background noise this morning is perfect; it’s the sound of ingrates, of ingratitude, of people who are so blinded by ideology they can’t see law and order and common sense in front of them” Hegseth said during his nearly 5-minute speech.
“There’s nothing ideological about this group,” he said of National Guard troops who have been deployed in D.C. for almost a year. “There’s nothing political about this exercise. Law and order is something all Americans deserve, Black, white, rich, poor, man or woman from D.C. or far-flung places in this country.”
He has also made increasingly frequent trips to Capitol Hill as he looks to shore up support for Trump’s desired defense funding request, a mammoth $1.5 trillion ask that has not gone down well with lawmakers. The Pentagon is also requesting about $80 billion in supplemental spending to help backfill munitions spent in Iran.
Behind the scenes, Hegseth, along with Caine, has held multiple conversations with Trump about additional strikes on Iran, though the president chose to instead continue negotiations, The Wall Street Journal reported Tuesday.
Trump insists talks between the two sides are showing progress, but that a return to military options is on the table should they fall apart.
“They’re agreeing to everything that I want, and they have to,” he told reporters last week. “Otherwise, we just go back and do what we have to do.”
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