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Pete Hegseth rant against media on Iran strikes shows Balakot moment for Team Trump

Six years ago, Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s government had similarly objected to questions raised against the success of the airstrikes in Balakot, Pakistan

Pete Hegseth Videograb

Our Bureau
Published 27.06.25, 11:00 AM

America had its Balakot moment on Thursday when defence secretary Pete Hegseth hammered journalists for questioning the US military’s success following Operation Midnight Hammer on Iran’s nuclear bases over the last weekend.

“You, and I mean you, the press, specifically you the press corps, because you cheer against President Trump so hard, it is in your DNA, in your blood to cheer against Trump,” Hegseth told journalists at the Pentagon.

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“Because you want him not to be successful so bad that you have to cheer against the efficacy of the strikes. You have to hope maybe they weren’t effective… So let’s take half-truths, spin information, leaked information, and then spin it and spin it in every way we can to try to cause doubt and manipulate the public mind.”

Six years ago, Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s government had similarly objected to questions raised against the success of the airstrikes in Balakot.

The strikes, which happened while the campaign for the 2019 Lok Sabha elections was on, featured prominently in the speeches of the BJP leaders. The target, unlike Hegseth’s, was largely the Opposition in India’s multiparty democracy and not the media.

Modi himself had led the attack.

“Now they have even started asking for proof of the air strike. Why are Congress and its allies demoralising our forces? Why are they giving statements which are benefitting our enemies?” Modi had asked at an election rally in Patna.

After Modi, his ministers like Amit Shah, Rajnath Singh, Nirmala Sitharaman and others have time and again questioned anyone who asked questions, be it the Opposition or the media.

Every big and small BJP leader and every IT cell minion since then have brought up the questions raised after Balakot as an affront to Modi in particular and India in general.

In this May’s Operation Sindoor, the Modi government held regular press briefings on the situation, unlike post-Balakot.

On Sunday, the US formally joined the 12-day Iran-Israel war and sent out 125 aircraft, including seven B-2 stealth bombers, submarine-launched Tomahawk missiles, GBU-57 bunker busting-bombs to hit Iran’s three most fortified nuclear sites at Fordo, Natanz and Isfahan.

While Trump claimed complete success, intelligence reports leaked to the US media said otherwise.

On Wednesday, Trump wrote on X: “Fake news CNN together with the failing New York Times have teamed up in an attempt to demean one of the most successful military strikes in history. The nuclear sites in Iran are completely destroyed. Both the Times and CNN are getting slammed by public.”

He wrote again the same day. “We just caught the failing New York Times working with fake news CNN, cheating again. They tried to demean the great work our B-2 pilots did, and they were wrong in doing so. These reporters are just bad and sick people. You would think they would be proud of the great success that we had, instead of always trying to make our country look bad. Total obliteration.”

Both The New York Times and CNN had carried stories based on a leaked report prepared by the Defence Intelligence Agency, the Pentagon’s Intelligence Agency, which said Iran’s nuclear programme had only been set back by a few months, which the Trump administration has refuted.

Trump has sent legal notices to both CNN and NYT.

“…time and time again classified information is leaked for political purposes to try to make the President look bad,” Hegseth said at the Pentagon briefing. “What’s really happening is you are undermining the success of the incredible B-2 pilots and the incredible F-35 pilots and the incredible refuellers and the incredible air defenders who accomplished their mission, setback a nuclear programme in ways that other Presidents would have dreamed.”

A section of the Opposition, the independent media and academicians, activists, writers and whoever has pointed finger at Narendra Modi has been painted with the same colours that Trump and Hegseth are using on the US media today.

Hegseth, 45, a former Television presenter, also had a few suggestions to the US media.

“How many stories have been written about how hard it is, I don’t know, flying a plane for 36 hours? Has MSNBC done that story? Has Fox? Have we done that story? How hard that is? Have we done it two or three times so that the American people know how difficult it is to shoot a drone from F-15 or 16 or F-22 or F-35? Or how hard it is to re-fuel mid-air?” asked Hegseth.

Meanwhile, no one seems to know the actual fate of Iran’s uranium stockpile, even though a consensus seems to be forming in the west that the centrifuges at its nuclear facilities have stopped.

Iran-Israel Conflict United States Pete Hegseth
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