Hegseth says U.S. is ‘accelerating’ war on Iran, as White House demands allied cooperation

The U.S. war effort against Iran was “accelerating” as American and Israeli forces fought for control of Iranian airspace and pressed farther inland to seek and destroy Iranian missile capabilities, top U.S. officials said Wednesday.

“Four days in, we have only just begun to fight,” said U.S. Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth.

“The throttle is coming up,” said Gen. Dan Caine, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff.

A reported Iranian missile strike at NATO member Turkey — intercepted by the alliance’s defense systems — was not expected to immediately broaden the war theater by triggering a clause in the North Atlantic Treaty Organization requiring other member nations to get involved, Hegseth said.

The White House, however, said President Trump expects full cooperation from European allies in the war effort and had successfully pressured Spain into such compliance using financial threats, which Spain denied.

“I think they heard the president’s message yesterday, loud and clear,” White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt said, referring to Trump’s threats to cut off trade with the European Union nation if it didn’t grant U.S. access to its military bases.

Iranian warship sunk

Hegseth, striking an unapologetic tone, said Iran’s surviving leaders “don’t know what plays to call” after exhausting initial retaliatory strategies devised before the U.S. assault, while the U.S. is firing on all fronts and racking up wins — including an American submarine recently sinking an Iranian warship with a torpedo in international waters, which Hegseth called the first such sinking since World War II.

“We are just getting started. We are accelerating, not decelerating,” he said. “We can sustain this fight easily for as long as we need to.”

Devastation from the U.S. and Israeli campaigns continued to spread Wednesday across Iran, where columns of heavy smoke could be seen rising in the western and eastern parts of Tehran, according to the Associated Press. At least 1,097 civilians had been killed — including 181 children — and 5,402 more injured as of Tuesday, according to the U.S.-based Human Rights Activists News Agency, with Iranian state media reporting similar figures.

Among the deadliest events was an airstrike that hit the Shajareh Tayyebeh elementary girls’ school in Minab on the first day of the war. During a United Nations Security Council meeting Monday, Iran’s
ambassador, Amir Saeid Iravani, condemned that attack and others that he said had occurred at schools, hospitals and in residential areas.

“Hundreds of innocent civilians have lost their lives. Many more were wounded,” he said, accusing the U.S. and Israel of “crimes against humanity.”

Hegseth said U.S. forces “never target civilian targets,” but acknowledged the United States is investigating the strike on the school.

Leavitt said Wednesday that American military operations had “absolutely crushed” the Iranian government, with its leaders “paying in blood” for terrorist violence they’d backed in the past, including against the United States.

She said the U.S. had destroyed 20 Iranian ships, killed 49 Iranian leaders, struck about 2,000 targets overall and destroyed “hundreds and hundreds” of ballistic missiles and systems — calling the operation so far a “resounding success.”

She said the operation followed years of other U.S. presidents being “too weak” to act against Iran, and came after Iranian leaders “refused to say yes to peace” during negotiations to end its nuclear aspirations before the U.S. attacks, and after Trump developed a “good feeling” that Iran was going to attack the U.S. and its personnel in the region.

Help for stranded Americans

Leavitt said the U.S. government is working to assist American citizens trying to flee the region and has already helped thousands get out. Asked whether the U.S. was responsible for the school strike, Leavitt said “not that we know of,” before adding that the incident was under investigation.

She said Trump is discussing with advisors any future role for the U.S. in Iran after its immediate goals are met. U.S. intelligence agencies are “closely monitoring” reports that the son of slain Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei is being eyed as a potential successor, Leavitt said, but “the truth is, we will have to wait and see.”

Caine, striking a far more measured tone at the Pentagon briefing, spoke of the “sacrifice” of the six U.S. service members who have been killed in the conflict to date and the “clear military objectives” of the operation, which include dismantling “Iran’s ability to project power outside of its borders, both today and into the future.”

And he said the U.S. has made “steady progress” toward those goals in recent hours. He said Iran’s “ballistic missile shots” were down 86% from the first day of fighting, and down 23% “just in the last 24 hours.” He said their “one-way attack drone shots” are down 73% from the “opening days” of the war.

That has allowed the U.S. to establish “localized air superiority across the southern flank of the Iranian coast and penetrate their defenses with overwhelming precision and firepower,” Caine said. “We will now begin to expand inland, striking progressively deeper into Iranian territory and creating additional freedom of maneuver for U.S. forces.”

An Iranian ballistic missile reportedly fell in Dimhiyye al-Kabira village near the Turkish border, in Syria’s northeast, on March 4, 2026. No casualties were reported in the area where the missile landed.

(Sevket Akca / Anadolu / Getty Images)

Hegseth and Caine spoke against a backdrop of escalating destruction across the Persian Gulf region, as Iran — which the Defense secretary acknowledged is a “formidable” enemy — continued to unleash a wave of retaliatory strikes and Israel pushed into Lebanon and against Iran-allied Hezbollah fighters there.

Their message of U.S. control in the region belied chaos in many parts of it — as sirens blared in Bahrain, U.S. and other foreign citizens scrambled to flee the area, global air traffic was in disarray and tanker traffic through the Strait of Hormuz, a key artery for the flow of global energy, was down by about 90%, according to the Associated Press.

NATO shoots down a missile aimed at Turkey

Turkey’s Defense Ministry announced Wednesday that NATO air defenses had shot down a ballistic missile fired toward Turkish airspace from Iran, which raised additional questions about a rapidly expanding footprint of the war given that Turkey is a NATO member and protected by a treaty clause — Article 5 — stating that an attack on one member is an attack on all.

Hegseth said that the U.S. was aware of the strike, but that he did not believe it would trigger Article 5 or force all of NATO into the conflict — which has already drawn in nations throughout the Persian Gulf region as Iran has targeted U.S. allies and military facilities.

Caine outlined a slate of military actions taken by those allies to defend themselves against Iran, saying Jordan “intercepted a cluster of Iranian one-way attack drones” headed for Oman; Bahrain shot down a drone approaching “critical shipping lanes” near Manama; Saudi Arabia stopped a “salvo of ballistic missiles aimed at energy facilities” near Dhahran; the United Arab Emirates “neutralized” drones targeting Abu Dhabi industrial areas, and Qatar shot down two Iranian bombers en route there.

“Together, these nations are helping to defend themselves and project power as required against the enemy,” Caine said.

Asked about tensions with Spain after it declined to allow the U.S. to use air bases there, Leavitt said that Trump expects all of the United States’ European allies “to cooperate in this long sought-after mission,” and that it was her understanding that Spain had changed its tune Wednesday and agreed to cooperate after being threatened financially by Trump. Spain’s foreign minister denied the government had changed its position.

Leavitt, Hegseth and Caine largely dismissed concerns about U.S. and allied munitions running low.

“We have sufficient precision munitions for the task at hand, both on the offense and defense,” Caine said, noting specific figures are an “operational security matter” he would not share.

Hegseth jettisoned any pretense of constraint or measured force by the U.S., instead casting its operations as an all-out assault on “radical Islamist Iranian adversaries” that he suggested both Democrats and the U.S. media were badly misrepresenting to make Trump look bad — a claim Leavitt echoed.

He suggested U.S. news media were overly focused on losses, such as the deaths of American military personnel, and not nearly focused enough on the progress the United States has made toward destroying Iran’s military capabilities in a matter of days.

“They are toast, and they know it — or at least soon enough they will know it,” he said of Iran. “And we’ve only just begun to hunt, dismantle, demoralize, destroy and defeat their capabilities, just four days in.”

Aiming for ‘complete control of Iranian skies’

Hegseth said that the U.S. and Israel in “under a week” will “have complete control of Iranian skies — uncontested airspace,” which he said will mean that “we will fly all day, all night, day and night, finding, fixing and finishing the missiles and defense industrial base of the Iranian military, finding and fixing their leaders and their military leaders.”

“Death and destruction from the sky, all day long,” he said. “We’re playing for keeps.”

It was unclear what exactly Hegseth meant by that, given the Trump administration’s constant messaging that the war on Iran will not be another “endless” engagement for the U.S. in the Middle East. He refused to commit to any specific timeline, saying the “only limits we have in this is President Trump’s desire to achieve specific effects on behalf of the American people.”

“You can say four weeks, but it could be six, it could be eight, it could be three,” he said. “Ultimately, we set the pace and the tempo. The enemy is off-balance, and we’re gonna keep them off-balance.”

Multiple sources told The Times that, behind the scenes, both U.S. and Israeli officials are casting doubt on their ability to get out of Iran quickly, suggesting that a months-long campaign may be required to destroy the country’s ballistic missile capabilities and install a new government the U.S. can work with.

The U.S. is using rules of engagement that are “bold, precise and designed to unleash American power, not shackle it,” Hegseth said. “This was never meant to be a fair fight, and it is not a fair fight. We are punching them while they’re down, which is exactly how it should be.”

Disruptions to tanker traffic through the Strait of Hormuz, and their potential effect on global and U.S. gas prices, were clearly on Trump’s mind. On Tuesday, he posted on his social media website that the U.S. would be providing wartime insurance for “ALL Maritime Trade” through gulf shipping lanes — as other insurers began canceling coverage — and that the U.S. Navy would begin escorting tankers if necessary.

“No matter what, the United States will ensure the FREE FLOW of ENERGY to the WORLD,” he wrote.

The message drew immediate concern from some of Trump’s political opponents, who questioned the cost to the U.S. of securing energy shipments for the entire world, including rivals such as China, one of the largest purchasers of crude oil from the region.

“Very few, if any, of these tankers are coming to the United States,” Rep. Joaquin Castro (D-Texas) wrote on X. “This certainly looks like the United States will be subsidizing and protecting oil shipments to China.”

Leavitt said the war will ultimately bring energy costs down because Iran will no longer control the Strait of Hormuz.

Times staff writer Gavin J. Quinton in Washington contributed to this report.