War With Iran Has ‘only Just Begun,’ Hegseth Says

Top Pentagon officials on Wednesday suggested that the Iran war could extend into a longer conflict — saying the fighting is “far from over” — even as they declined to explain what ultimate victory might look like.

The warnings from Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth and Joint Chiefs Chair Gen. Dan Caine about an enduring conflict were the first from military officials, and they underscored President Donald Trump’s predictions over the past several days that the campaign could last for weeks.

And, in keeping with the president, neither Hegseth nor Caine outlined what an end to the conflict might look like, as the war entered its fifth day amid continued air assaults by Israeli and American forces and sporadic missile reprisals from Iran.

"We've only just begun to hunt, dismantle, demoralize, destroy and defeat their capabilities," Hegseth told reporters at the Pentagon on Wednesday. That statement echoed Trump, who said Monday that “we haven’t even started hitting them hard. The big wave hasn’t even happened. The big one is coming soon.”

The campaign, which kicked off Saturday with joint American and Israeli airstrikes, has seen thousands of bombs dropped on Iranian targets, eliminating most of its air defenses and hitting missile launchers and elements of Tehran’s defense manufacturing capabilities.

The strikes, Caine said, have reduced Iran’s ability to launch missiles and drones at targets throughout the Gulf region. Over the past 24 hours, Iran’s ballistic missile launches have fallen by 23 percent from the first day of the war, while one-way attack drone shots are down 73 percent, according to Caine.

Still, Iran has managed to penetrate U.S. defenses. Six U.S. Army Reserve soldiers were killed in Kuwait on Sunday by an Iranian Shahed drone that struck a tactical operations center that was not fully protected against aerial threats. The strike underscored the threat that small, cheap drones present to American forces in the region, as they normally fly below traditional radar systems and can be launched in large groups that can be difficult to fully defeat.

Iranian drones have also killed Israeli civilians, hit apartment buildings throughout the Gulf region and slammed into the headquarters of the Navy’s 5th Fleet in Bahrain.

Caine acknowledged those losses Wednesday but said the air campaign inside Iran will intensify: “We will now begin to expand inland, striking progressively deeper into Iranian territory and creating additional freedom of maneuver for U.S. forces.”

The general declined to comment on the possibility of American ground troops entering the fight at some point, however.

The U.S. has expanded the geography of the war, sinking an Iranian warship off the coast of Sri Lanka on Wednesday with a torpedo launched by a submarine, the first time an American sub has torpedoed an enemy ship since World War II.

Hegseth also signaled that the American sphere of influence in the region continues to grow, saying that “more bombers and more fighters are arriving just today,” and will begin dropping larger 500 pound, 1000 pound and 2000 pound precision munitions, presumably to target Iranian weapons storage sites and its nuclear program, which are buried deep underground.

U.S. forces have expended thousands of munitions and air defense interceptors in the conflict already, from ship-launched Tomahawk missiles to air-to-ground missiles, and replacing those weapons will be costly. Some top lawmakers have said Congress is already talking about a supplemental spending bill to cover the war’s costs, amid warnings that the U.S. is running short of key munitions, including interceptors designed to protect against Iranian missiles.

Hegseth flatly denied that the U.S. would be running short of munitions, again following Trump’s lead in saying the U.S. enjoys a “nearly unlimited stockpile” of weapons to draw from.