Hegseth warns US ready to resume fighting ‘with more power than ever’ if Tehran spurns deal

Joint Chiefs head says US Navy will ‘actively pursue’ vessels in service of Iran anywhere in the world; Hegseth lashes out at press, accuses them of acting like ‘Pharisees’ in New Testament

US Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth on Thursday accused Iran of piracy and terrorism in the Strait of Hormuz, and said the US was ready to resume fighting “with more power than ever before” if the current ceasefire ends.

Hegseth’s remarks at a Pentagon press briefing come as efforts were underway to resume direct US-Iran talks, and after US President Donald Trump indicated that the war may be nearing its end. The current two-week ceasefire is due to end on April 22.

The US is “maximally postured to restart combat operations,” while Iran couldn’t reconstitute its own military, Hegseth said at the start of the press briefing.

“This is not a fair fight,” he said, adding that while Iran is “digging out of bombed-out and devastated facilities, we are only getting stronger.”

“We are reloading with more power than ever before, and… better intelligence than ever before, as you expose yourself with your movement to our watchful eye,” he said, addressing Iran’s leadership.

Hegseth also claimed Iran’s blockade of the Strait of Hormuz, a key pathway for the global supply of oil, does not amount to control of the waterway.

In negotiations to end the war, Iran has demanded continued control of the strait, where the US earlier this week announced its own blockade on vessels that belong to or pay tolls to Iran.

“You can’t control anything,” Hegseth said. “To be clear, threatening to shoot missiles and drones at ships, commercial ships that are lawfully transiting international waters, that is not control. That’s piracy. That’s terrorism. The United States Navy controls the traffic going in and out of the strait because we have real assets and real capabilities, and we’re doing this blockade.”

“Less than 10% of America’s naval power” has been deployed to enforce the US blockade in Hormuz, Hegseth said.

“The math is clear. We’re using 10% of the world’s most powerful navy, and you have 0% of your Navy,” he added.

The US Navy currently has 16 warships, including 11 destroyers, three amphibious assault ships, an aircraft carrier, and a littoral combat ship in the Middle East out of a battle force of roughly 300 total warships.

While Iran’s conventional navy has been heavily damaged since the start of the war on February 28, the fleet of small boats and attack craft used by Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps to patrol the strait remains largely intact, the Wall Street Journal has reported.

Wise to turn around

In his own comments at the Pentagon briefing, US military chief Gen. Dan Caine described the US naval effort as a “blockade of Iran’s ports and coastlines” with enforcement “inside Iran’s territorial seas and in international waters.”

In addition, he said US forces would “actively pursue any Iranian-flagged vessel or any vessel attempting to provide material support to Iran” — anywhere in the world.

Caine issued a clear warning to any targeted vessel attempting to circumvent a US blockade in the Strait of Hormuz: “Turn around or prepare to be boarded… We will use force.”

So far, no ships have had to be boarded, and “thirteen ships have made the wise choice of turning around,” said Caine.

The blockade “applies to all ships, regardless of nationality, heading into or from Iranian ports” and includes “dark fleet vessels carrying Iranian oil,” he said, defining the latter as “vessels or those illicit or illegal ships evading international regulations, sanctions or insurance requirements.”

More than 10,000 sailors, marines and airmen using ships, planes and helicopters are working to enforce the blockade, Caine said, likening the operation to “driving a sports car through a supermarket parking lot on a pay day weekend.”

The US and Israel launched their bombing campaign in Iran on February 28 in a bid to destabilize the Islamic Republic’s regime and destroy its ballistic missile and nuclear programs.

The US and Iran held peace talks over the weekend, amid the two-week ceasefire announced by US President Donald Trump last week, but large gaps reportedly remain over Iran’s nuclear program, and mediator Pakistan said Thursday that “there are no dates yet” for renewed talks.

While Iran, whose leaders are sworn to Israel’s destruction, denies seeking nuclear weapons, it has obstructed international inspectors from checking its nuclear facilities and enriched uranium to levels that have no peaceful application, calling it a sovereign right.

Speaking at the Pentagon on Thursday, Hegseth said the US would ensure that “Iran never has a nuclear weapon.”

Instead of continued combat, Iran can engage in negotiations with the US and “choose a prosperous future, a golden bridge, and we hope that you do,” Hegseth said.

‘Our press are just like these Pharisees’

In another part of his comments, Hegseth also slammed coverage of the US-Israeli war in Iran, likening outlets critical of the campaign to Christian scripture’s Pharisees, the forebears of modern Judaism.

Hegseth compared members of the media to the “Pharisees” of the Christian gospels who condemn Jesus for healing a man on the Sabbath.

Hegseth, in his own take on the passage, said, “You see, the Pharisees, the so-called and self-appointed elites of their time, they were there to witness, to write everything down, to report. But their hearts were hardened. Even though they witnessed a literal miracle, it didn’t matter.”

He continued, “I sat there in church and I thought, our press are just like these Pharisees. Not all of you. Not all of you. But the legacy, Trump-hating press.”

The Pharisees were a Jewish sect of the late Second Temple era that included the founding sages of Rabbinic Judaism, whose literary and oral canon shapes traditional Jewish practice to this day.

The story recounted by Hegseth, which appears in various versions in the Gospels according to Matthew, Mark and Luke, has Jesus entering a synagogue on the Jewish Sabbath and healing a man with a shriveled hand.

Some of the Pharisees, according to the Mark verion “were looking for a reason to accuse Jesus, so they watched him closely to see if he would heal him on the Sabbath.”

After Jesus defies the Pharisees and proceeds to heal the man, “the Pharisees went out and began to plot with the Herodians how they might kill Jesus,” says the text.

The accusation that Jews killed Jesus would go on to serve as fodder for untold instances of antisemitic violence throughout the Middle Ages and beyond. Hegseth has reportedly come under fire in the US media for his use of Christian motifs to describe and justify the war in Iran.