US Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth speaks during a press conference on US military action in Iran, at the Pentagon in Washington, DC, on March 2, 2026.
Brendan Smialowski | Afp | Getty Images
Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth on Tuesday said, “Today will be, yet again, our most intense day of strikes inside Iran.”
“Iran stands alone, and they are badly losing,” Hegseth said at a press conference at the Pentagon with Gen. Dan Caine, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff.
He said that in the past 24 hours, the United States had seen “Iran fire the lowest number of missiles they’ve been capable of firing yet.”
Hegseth’s aggressive and confident comments echoed those made a day earlier by President Donald Trump to reporters at his Miami-area golf club.
Trump had predicted that war would end “very soon,” because the destruction of Iranian military assets was happening much fast than he expected when attacks began by the United States and Israel on Feb. 28.
He also warned Iran’s ruling regime against withholding oil from world markets after the war.
“If Iran does anything that stops the flow of Oil within the Strait of Hormuz, they will be hit by the United States of America TWENTY TIMES HARDER than they have been hit thus far,” Trump wrote later Monday night in a Truth Social post.
As Hegseth spoke on Tuesday authorities in Abu Dhabi confirmed that a drone attack by Iran had ignited a fire at the oil refinery in the Ruwais Industrial Complex. No injuries were immediately reported.
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