Roughly a week into the U.S. war with Iran, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth held a press briefing and took a moment to push back against reporting he disagreed with. The beleaguered Pentagon chief specifically said he’d seen coverage that suggested the war in Iran “might be expanding” beyond Iranian borders.
“Nothing could be further from the truth,” he said.
A week later, the former Fox News host tried to re-emphasize the same argument, telling reporters, “It’s worth underscoring, I see in the media banners that say ‘war expanding’ or ‘war spreading.’ It’s actually the opposite. It’s actually quite contained.”
Even at the time, the rhetoric was difficult to take seriously. On the first day of the military offensive, the conflict involved three countries: The United States, Israel and Iran. By the sixth day of the war, The Washington Post noted that the violence had “touched 12 countries across the Middle East.”
This week, nearly five months after Hegseth insisted that the conflict was “actually quite contained,” neither “expanding” nor “spreading,” his arguments from March appear tragically absurd. The New York Times reported:
A resurgence of fighting in the war with Iran is expanding the scope of the conflict across the Middle East and further threatening shipments of oil and other products crucial to the global economy.
With little sign of peace talks resuming, a series of attacks, including two consecutive nights of strikes between Iran and the United States, ended a short period of relative calm — and entangled a growing list of U.S. allies in the conflict.
Jordan and Saudi Arabia, for example, have been targeted and are moving forward with plans to create a military coalition. Egypt this week was also affected for the first time, with a drone strike hitting an Egyptian port.
This dovetailed with U.S. and Saudi forces conducting joint strikes on Iranian proxy forces in Iraq, which both expanded the geographic footprint of the conflict and marked Riyadh’s first direct military entry into the war.
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Unfortunately, we can keep going. This past weekend, Ukraine struck an Iranian commercial cargo ship in the Caspian Sea, sparking plans for a retaliatory attack that was called off after a flurry of diplomacy.
Meanwhile, Reuters reported this week that Iran is in the process of rebuilding its defenses with missile launchers that Tehran recently purchased from China, despite Donald Trump’s insistence that Beijing is “not participating” in the conflict.
Asked on Wednesday about that reporting, the American president — who has limitless access to one of the planet’s most sophisticated intelligence operations — told reporters, “Well, that would be surprising.”
Trump, who has developed a reputation for showing weakness toward China, quickly added, “I mean, things like that happen.”
Whether Hegseth continues to believe the conflict is “actually quite contained” and remains annoyed by headlines about an “expanding” and “spreading” conflict is unclear.
Steve Benen is a producer for "The Rachel Maddow Show," the editor of MaddowBlog and an MS NOW political contributor. He's also the bestselling author of "Ministry of Truth: Democracy, Reality, and the Republicans' War on the Recent Past."
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