Secretary of War Pete Hegseth boasted Thursday that Iranian leadership positions are now “temp jobs” thanks to the US and Israel rapidly taking out the Islamic Republic’s top brass.
Hegseth specifically highlighted how Operation Epic Fury has been successful at picking off leaders of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC), and the Basij, its paramilitary plainclothes force responsible for crushing internal dissent.
“The last job anyone in the world wants right now [is to be a] senior leader for the IRGC or Basij. Temp jobs, all of them,” Hegseth crowed to reporters at the Pentagon.
On Tuesday, Israel took credit for killing Basij commander Gholamreza Soleimani as well as the regime’s top national security chief and de facto leader, Ali Larijani.
The following day, Israel announced that Tehran’s intelligence minister, Esmaeil Khatib, had also been killed in overnight strikes.
Hegseth also bragged Thursday about how the US has been rapidly degrading Iran’s military assets.
“To borrow a page from Admiral Ernest King in World War II, we’ve decided to share the ocean with Iran — we’ve given them the bottom half,” he said. “We’ve damaged or sunk over 120 of their Navy ships, with battle damage assessments pending for many more.”
