*’You’re Digging Up Remaining Launchers, Missiles You’ll Not Reconstitute, We’re Locked, Loaded For Fresh War’
*Sign Deal Against Nuclear Weapon Possession Or We Force You The Hard Way, He Warns
*Labels Section Of American Press Hypocritical Pharisees
Iran’s energy infrastructure is “not destroyed yet” and the US is “locked and loaded” to finish the job, Pete Hegseth, the War Secretary, said today.
He urged Iran’s leadership to peacefully append their signatures to a US-formulated deal banning the country from owning a nuclear weapon, or force Washington to force them to do so “the hard way.”
Furthermore, Hegseth turned to the critical section of the White House Press Corps, labelling many of them gathered for his briefing 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 the nuclear deal or face consequences for its remaining infrastructure, power generation and energy industry.
“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.
Iran is known to have over the years buried some of its nuclear components and military hardware underground, away from the prying eyes of the regulatory International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) and the international community, allegedly to enable the Persian Gulf nation develop a nuclear weapon secretly.
“We are reloading with more power than ever before, and better intelligence, even more importantly, better intelligence than ever before,” he added.
The choice facing Iran, Hegseth 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.”
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 Christ – and his chief antagonists.
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.”
“Sometimes,” he told the room of reporters, “it’s hard to figure out what side some of you are actually on.”
Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, General Dan Caine, who also spoke, 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, had been in force for more than 24 hours and that more than 10,000 sailors, Marines and aircrew were 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.
*PHOTO CAPTION: Hegseth (bent, near mic) speaking during the media briefing.
