Trump's war boss in testy exchange over nuclear 'obliteration'

US Defence Secretary Pete Hegseth has been upbraided in his high-pressure appearance before the House Armed Services Committee.

Congressman Adam Smith locked horns with Hegseth over what appeared to be an accidental admission that last year’s strikes on Iran did not, as the White House claimed, destroy the country’s nuclear apparatus.

“Their nuclear facilities have been obliterated,” Hegseth said of 2025’s Operation Midnight Hammer.

“Woah, woah, woah, woah. We had to start this war, you just said, because the nuclear weapon was an imminent threat,” Smith answered.

“Now you’re saying it was completely obliterated?”

Hegseth said Iran had not given up their “ambitions”, to which Smith suggested Midnight Hammer “accomplished nothing of substance”.

“You’re missing the point,” Hegseth said.

Hegseth also denied suggestions the Iran war had become a “quagmire” conflict the US was unable to easily extricate itself from.

He claimed that “on the battlefield” it had been an “astounding military success”.

“Do you call Iran closing the Strait of Hormuz winning?” Congressman Seth Moulton, an Iraq War veteran like Hegseth, said.

Moulton also derided the US naval blockade, likening it to a game of tag.