Is Defence Secretary Pete Hegseth waging a holy war against Iran?

0:00This BBC podcast is supported by ads outside the UK.

0:30Schwab offers. Because Schwab knows that when it comes to your finances, choice matters. No matter your goals, investing style, life stage or experience, Schwab has everything you need, all in one place, so you can invest your way. Visit schwab.com to learn more.

1:00that war delivered in a way like a sermon. Shot down on a Friday, good Friday, hidden in a cave, a crevice, all of Saturday and rescued on Sunday. Flown out of Iran as the sun was rising on Easter Sunday. A pilot reborn, all home and accounted for a nation rejoicing. God is good. He is a Christian. He is muscular. Pete Hegseth is bringing an ideological vision to the Pentagon that in many respects previous defence secretaries simply haven't had. So what is it that makes him so different? How is he changing the Pentagon and indeed America's ability to fight wars? Welcome to AmeriCast.

1:52AmeriCast. AmeriCast from BBC News. You hear that sound? Oh, I think when I hear that sound, it reminds me of money. We didn't start this war, but under President Trump, we are finishing it. This is a big cover-up, and this administration is engaged in it. This guy has Trump derangement syndrome. I have four words for you. Turn the volume up.

2:18Hello, it's Justin in the worldwide command bunker of AmeriCast in London, England. And it's Anthony in the American headquarters of AmeriCast at the BBC Bureau in Washington, DC. And the reason I'm in the bunker is that I want to impress Pete Hegseth in case he listened to America, which who knows, maybe he does, because he's very tuned, isn't he, Anthony, to the media, because that frankly is his background, much more than I think I'm right in saying, aren't I, any other defense secretary there has ever been? Yeah, I think that's safe to say. He came over from Fox News, where he was a weekend program host.

2:53Of course, he does have a military background. He was in the National Guard, I believe a major, so not a high-ranking officer, but he does have a military background, but nothing like past secretaries of defense who were former generals, who were senior members of Congress who came over, who had long experience with the appropriations of the bureaucracy of the Defense Department. He is much more of an ideologue, a true believer, and someone who has, since he's come in, helped reshape the Defense Department in a much different kind of an image, a much more ideological image. Yeah. And we're going to hear later on from Eric Schmidt, who is national security correspondent for the New York Times, but has been a Pentagon reporter since 1990.

3:39So he's seen a few of these characters come and go, including, of course, some very big characters like Donald Rumsfeld during the Iraq conflict. And it's going to be very interesting to see what he genuinely thinks, actually, the way in which Hegseth compares with those for some of those reasons you've just mentioned, but also in his ability to get stuff done. Because that's the point, isn't it, Anthony? Right at the beginning, when he was first nominated for this job, there were people, including some quite serious people, who thought not only that his background wasn't quite the right one, but actually when you're dealing with a massive bureaucracy like the Pentagon.

4:16He might not just have the bureaucratic smarts, as it were, to last. Right. He was confirmed by 51 votes. Essentially, it was 50-50 in the Senate. Three Republicans voted against him, and it was J.D. Vance, the vice president, who broke the tie to push him over the top. Mitch McConnell, the senior member of the Senate Republican Caucus, former Senate majority leader, he voted against Hegseth and said he was not qualified to run the department. So a controversial pick, someone who, as we discussed, did not have a traditional background to manage that bureaucracy. And he came in with a lot of questions about how he would run the Defense Department.

4:57But as you mentioned, he made some pretty significant changes, changes in personnel from the very get go. He was firing members, the chief of staff, the senior member of the military, fired him, or Donald Trump fired him, but certainly with the ascent of Hegseth, he replaced other people who were top brass in the Defense Department, changed kind of the attitude there. If you remember, Justin, he called all of the generals from all over the world, admirals and generals, into Quantico, Virginia, and essentially lectured them on personal fitness and hygiene, told them that they weren't on board for everything he was trying to do that they the exits were there at the back of the room.

5:37I look out at this group and I see great Americans. Leaders who have given decades to our great republic at great sacrifice to yourselves and to your families. But if the words I'm speaking today are making your heart sink, then you should do the honorable thing and resign. We would thank you for your service. He did say in that Quantico meeting, you know, get on board. We're going to be doing things and you need to either sign up for it or sign out. And since then, the use of the American military by Donald Trump, I mean, a lot of the things, the targeting ships, suspected drug-riding boats in the Caribbean, the operation to remove Nicolas Maduro from Venezuela, the bombing strike on Iranian nuclear facilities last year, And now, of course, most dramatically, this extended war against Iran, all of that, it kind of reflects they refashioned the Department of War to fight wars, and that's what they've been doing.

6:43Yeah. And they have God on that side. Yeah, that was one of the things I think really has come across with Hegseth since he has been in the Defense Department, is how much he wears his religion on his sleeve. And there were questions about kind of his Christian nationalist ideology. He had a tattoo that was very controversial, a crusader tattoo that when he was confirmed came up as potentially problematic and also actually was apparently part of the reasons why he was not promoted in the military. and now that he is the head of the Defense Department, he has talked about religion and talked about Christian ideology and talked about God more than certainly any defense secretary in modern American history.

7:33Yeah, and we heard a little bit of it in the pre-intro, but let's hear a bit more of him now because it is really, as you say, it's incredibly striking. To the warriors of epic fury, I say well done. You're the backbone of our country, your skill, your bravery, and sheer guts and grit showed the world what America is all about. Our troops, our American warriors, deserve the credit for this day. But God deserves all the glory. Let every round find its mark against the enemies of righteousness and our great nation. Give them wisdom in every decision, endurance for the trial ahead, unbreakable unity, and overwhelming violence of action against those who deserve no mercy.

8:17Preserve their lives, sharpen their resolve, and let justice be executed swiftly and without remorse, that evil may be driven back and wicked souls delivered to the eternal damnation prepared for them. Blimey, Anthony. Preserve their lives, sharpen their resolve, etc. I think any defense secretary might have said, but it's what he says about the enemies, isn't it? wicked souls delivered to the eternal damnation prepared for them, but also this idea that justice needs to be delivered with no mercy, which of course to a lot of Christians from different branches of the Christian faith itself sounds, well, odd.

8:55Yeah, it sounds odd, a certain strain of religious fervor, but certainly not something that everyone would agree is in the keeping of Christianity. But, you know, if you look at the history of Christianity. Maybe there are certain times when that has been that kind of pervert. We haven't got time to go through the whole history of Christianity. There was another time in another podcast you and I could do it. Yeah, maybe we'll do a multi-part one, Justin. But when you listen to him, it sounds almost like he's talking from the pulpit. And he has been bringing religion, not just in what he says from the press conference room, but apparently holding regular prayer sessions in the Pentagon to the point where I've read some reports of people feeling uncomfortable about that.

9:39When I was over in Cotter, on a military base in Cotter with Donald Trump at the beginning of last year, middle of last year, I remember they were gathered to hear Donald Trump speak. And before he came out, there was a Christian minister who was giving a sermon, essentially, to the gathered troops that was also very kind of vivid in its embrace of Christianity, embrace of Jesus and God. And he's giving this speech to troops who, one, they're not all Christians, and two, some of the people in there, there were Qatari soldiers in there too. And I remember looking over at their section as this was going on, and they had these kind of puzzled looks, like, why are we here sitting through essentially a Christian religious service?

10:25But that is the way that Hegseth has refashioned the Defense Department just in a little over a year. Anthony, I know you've got to go now, so we will let you go. But thanks a lot and talk to you soon. My pleasure. Talk to you later. Joining me now, Eric Schmidt, national security correspondent for The New York Times, based in Washington, D.C. But not only that, Eric, you have been at the Pentagon since 1990, which is where that shows a commitment to something which goes beyond the call of duty, I think it's fair to say. Yeah, I'm just crazy. Who knows? But good to be with you, Justin. Thanks.

11:02Let's begin with who Pete Hegseth is as a person, because he's not like a normal, if I could use that word in inverted commas, he's not a normal defense secretary, is he? And he wouldn't claim to be. No, he's not at all. And I think he would take pride in saying he's not. In fact, when his name was first announced, I think we were all scrambling to Google his name. It kind of had an echo when I heard a name. And, oh, yeah, he's the Fox News Sunday host. And I'm going, but that can't be the guy they picked to be defense secretary. And as it turns out, of course, he has a military record. He did serve in Afghanistan and in Iraq as kind of a mid-grade officer with the National Guard.

11:41He's from Minnesota. But that hardly, in normal times, qualifies you to be a defense secretary. Typically, that's somebody, a senior statesman. If you think of a Don Rumsfeld kind of character who served in Congress as a White House chief of staff, maybe it was a retired general like Jim Mattis or Lloyd Austin, somebody with some credentials. And I think the main credential here was that President Trump had seen and liked him on his performances on Fox News, and that was the voice that he wanted over at the Pentagon. Yeah. Yeah. And you think back to particularly the Rumsfeld days. And I remember him from when I was based in D.C.

12:23and going into the Pentagon. And you had that real sense of history, as you say, being a congressman, but he'd also been a very senior kind of figure in previous administrations. And the thing I suppose the reason why previously it's always thought that that matters is that the Pentagon is huge and unwieldy. And oh, my goodness, if you want to get to grips with it, the thinking has always been you can't just be telegenic. You've got to be incredibly good at that sort of bureaucratic stuff, too. You've got to remember the Pentagon has over two million active and reserve service members and another million or so civilians.

13:01So it's a gigantic bureaucracy. Of course, the U.S. military operates all over the world. And it has a budget now, at least starting this year, of a trillion dollars, which is just remarkable. It's really a sprawling enterprise. Has he separated himself off as a kind of leader, totemic figure at the top of it, and let other people do the kind of grunt work, as it were, but the important work of organizational things, or what? Yeah, typically the defense secretary of the American system is kind of at the top and picks one or two or three main issues to really focus on. Obviously, they work very closely with the president and the rest of the cabinet, But he leaves the day-to-day workings of the Pentagon and kind of the inner grits of that to a deputy defense secretary and all the kind of higher level civilian aides.

13:51And, of course, then the military runs quite a bit of it as well. And Hexeth, when he came in, made it very clear that his first and foremost objection was going after DEI, diversity, equity, inclusion. He felt, and he had written about this in previous books and in podcasts and on his Fox News programs, he felt that the United States military had gone woke. You know, it had basically bent over backwards to accommodate minorities, to accommodate women, and that the military that he enlisted in sometime after 9-11, really to go after enemies of the country, had really gone soft. And so what he was trying and what he's talked about repeatedly in his writings, and certainly after he came in as secretary, was to inject more lethality and combat effectiveness inside the United States military.

14:43and that we'd gotten bogged down in these wars, the same ones that he'd fought in, in Afghanistan and Iraq. And we had to get away from that mindset and really start thinking more broadly to future-type threats, whether they be in Russia or China, or as this administration now is focused on the Western Hemisphere and defending the homeland, and also of new technology. So I think those are kind of some of the big issues that he took on right away. Would a fair-minded person say he's had any success in them? Well, I mean, it depends on your point of view. Again, one of the first things he did was sack the sitting chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, an African-American named C.Q.

15:23Brown, a fighter pilot who had tremendous wartime fighting credentials. And yet I think Hegseth has basically insinuated that he only got his job because he was black. He has systematically gone through the senior ranks of all the military services and fired some two dozen top generals and admirals. He just recently fired the Army Chief of Staff, Randy George, and that marked the last of the service chiefs, the heads of the various branches of the military services in the U.S. military that he has fired and now is basically putting his own people in. So he is trying to remake the United States military and what he feels is a more with people that he believes are going to be more focused on taking the fight to the enemy, whoever that may be, whether it's drug traffickers on the southwest border of the United States or in the most recent case against the country of Iran.

16:18And of course, if he gets criticism, he is very, very tetchy. Well, in fact, more than tetchy, isn't he? He's actually kicked people out of the Pentagon. Explain the relationship, the Hegseth relationship with those people in the press who ask reasonable questions of what he's doing. Yeah, he doesn't like that. He doesn't like tough questions. I think his view of a good journalist is somebody who's going to basically echo whatever the party line is coming out of the Pentagon or the White House. And as you said, he got a pretty good going over, a rough going over in the confirmation process. We wrote a lot about his shortfalls, his multiple marriages, his drinking problems, his failed businesses.

16:58And so it wasn't a pretty sight, and he barely got through the approval process. And I think he took that as a—brought that grudge with him into the building. And rather than trying to work with the media—obviously, there's always going to be tensions with the media—he immediately sought to restrict our access. and ultimately last fall confronted us with the option if we wanted to keep the access to the Pentagon that we've had for many, many years, we would essentially have to sign a loyalty oath. That is, we could only publish information that had been pre-approved by the Pentagon. And of course, with the First Amendment, such as it is here in the U.S., there was no way we were going to do that.

17:36And we walked out. The New York Times has sued the Pentagon over this policy in the midst of litigation to try and get access back into the Pentagon. But it's a very combative relationship, even more so than I think pretty much any other secretary I've covered in 35 years. These news conferences we've seen during the Iran war are rare, and they hadn't really happened at all up until the war. Defense secretaries like other cabinet members and the president typically travel with the media. He only takes kind of a selected handpicked view from conservative press that he feels will kind of ask safe questions and, again, echo kind of his view of the world and his view of operations.

18:17So, no, he doesn't like to be challenged. And it's been tricky to kind of get him on the record in confronting him with these things. When you say the most aggressive ever, I mean, thinking back to Donald Rumsfeld, and people might remember the briefings which were televised during the Iraq war. People of a certain age will remember them. And I certainly remember occasionally being in the room. And frankly, it was terrifying because he was on great form. And he's acerbic, isn't he, Rumsfeld, and really capable of kind of putting down individuals. And he often did that. But you're saying Hegseth is more than that.

18:56The thing with Rumsfeld was you're exactly right. He was acerbic. He was combative. But he was a wrestler in college. And what he liked was confrontation. And if you were prepared and if you had your ducks in a row and you were well informed and you were willing to push back, he respected that. He liked that. He liked the jousting. He wasn't afraid of it. He was supremely confident. Pete Hexeth is not confident. He doesn't have a whole lot of self-confidence. He projects like he does, but if I think he did, he would be willing to take us on. So the difference between Hexeth and Rumsfeld is huge in that regard.

19:31And then Rumsfeld would take on any comers. And if you made your point, it was rare, but every once in a while he would acknowledge, you know, maybe you've got something there, Schmidt. I don't think you're right most of the time, but every once in a while. Whereas Hexeth doesn't even, you know, entertain that as an option. And just to underline, if you're not in the Pentagon, the Pentagon is a huge building. People will know the building. And the crucial point, Eric, is you can sort of roam about, can you? If you're based in there and allowed in there and credentialed to be there, you can talk to people in corridors and glean interesting pieces of information all day.

20:11That's exactly right. It's a very unusual place to report on in Washington. Up until recently, it was the largest office building in the world. It has about 20 ,000 people who work there day in, day out. And you're right. As long as you were credentialed, which means going through a background check and being vetted, you could pretty much go anywhere you wanted in the building and you would bump into people. I remember running into Secretary Jim Mattis. He picked up his own dry cleaning and you could walk back to his office with him. It would be off the record, but you could glean a tidbit or two.

20:43And you were always running into generals or top officials just in the hallway. And you would have – you could confirm things with them or run things by them. And so it was very important just to be there and pick up things like that. And right now, that's what we're missing. Yeah. I remember having a series of conversations with Paul Wolfowitz. You remember Paul Wolfowitz? What was he, Deputy Secretary of Defense? He was the number three guy. Number three, yeah. The Sergeant Policy. That's the access that the BBC gets, Eric, to the number three guy. But he was very friendly at the time. He was very important.

21:18He was a very important guy when you were there. He was, and also to your point, he was perfectly capable of being quite indiscreet once the microphones was because he felt, I suppose the Pentagon, and this is not a phrase that Pete Hegseth would like, but it's a sort of safe space, isn't it, to be able to talk to people who have the right to be there. Because, you know, people like you are not going to just blab information out in a way that damages the United States, and they can be relatively confident of that. Absolutely. And that's the big difference. Secretary Hegseth, for whatever reason, believes that the media is essentially a security risk and he's treating us as such.

21:55Whereas, and again, the decades that I've covered the building, there's never been any kind of breach of security. We take our jobs very seriously. Most of the Pentagon correspondents working there have been there for years, if not decades. And it's a very important job. You know, we take it very seriously. I think to a lot of Brits, the audience this podcast is around the world, and plenty of people listening now will not be British, or indeed quite a few of them will actually be US citizens. But for Brits, it's always been fascinating to us the degree of religiosity that's sort of acceptable at the top of American society.

22:29And you think back to George W. Bush and Tony Blair and their relationship. I remember Tony Blair being asked here by my former wonderfully esteemed colleague, Jeremy Paxman, whether he prayed with George W. Bush before they sent troops to Iraq. Does the fact that George Bush and you are both Christians make it easier for you to view these conflicts in terms of good and evil? I don't think so, no. I think that whether you're a Christian or not a Christian, you can try and perceive what is good and what is evil. You don't pray together, for example? No, we don't pray together, Jeremy, no. Why do you smile?

23:12Because, why do you ask me the question? Because I'm trying to find out how you feel about it. I mean, possibly. And the question was deeply discomforting for Tony Blair and for his people who just sort of dismissed it. We don't do religion. We don't want to go down those roads. But actually, if you think back to the George W. Bush administration, although Rumsfeld wasn't big on religious belief and certainly religiosity, you think back to the Bush White House. They, of course, were, weren't they, Eric? The place hum to the sound of prayer at various stages. So it's not, I suppose the point I'm making or the question I'm asking is, how unusual is it in the American system to have someone who is so openly and constantly committed to his religious faith and wants to talk about it?

24:05Well, I think it is unusual, particularly for a defense secretary in this sense. And it's usually a defense secretary is somebody who tries to stay as nonpartisan as possible, but it certainly would keep religion out. I think this also came up during the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, when, of course, the whole question of was there discrimination against Muslims? Were we fighting a holy war? That kind of thing. And, you know, I think you had military people come out very quickly. In fact, you had the President Bush at the time come out very quickly and say this is not a war against Muslims at all.

24:38But you have people in this administration, I think, who demonize Islam and looking at that. And I think we're seeing this certainly with Republican members of Congress. The Islamophobia is quite striking right now. And there's not much senior officials in the White House are doing to tamp that down. What's he going to do in the future, do you think? What does he want to do? Is this a kind of job where he fades away at the end of it or goes back to Fox News or what? There's a lot of speculation out there. Pete Hexeth is 45. He turns 46 in June. He's a young guy, obviously quite telegenic, well-spoken, and from people I talk to in political circles, quite ambitious.

25:15And I think there's a lot of rumors. He lives in Tennessee, outside of Nashville, that he would like to run for office, particularly there. But there are even echoes that he might like to run for president someday. I mean, using this as a stepping stone toward that. I don't think maybe, you know, in the next cycle, but perhaps following on. But it's interesting to see what kind of following he would have, particularly on the conservative right, who, you know, believe in what he's talking about as somebody who can kind of, who's very closely aligned with the military, although really doesn't have as much say in military operations.

25:48operations. I mean, obviously, his defense secretary, he'll sign off and approve on these, but he's not, say, a Lloyd Austin or a Jim Mattis, who are former four-star generals who could really get in the weeds on both operational and strategic issues. He leaves that to the senior uniform guys like General Cain to do. But I think he could use this as a stepping stone, particularly if he continues to have successful operations. That's why the Iran war is so crucial right now and why he's framed it, basically saying America is winning. We've won this war. We've defeated the Iranian military. And they go on to tick off all these statistics.

26:24And yet we see with our own eyes how Iran is still able to fire off missiles and drones. They still control the Strait of Hormuz. So while they may be battered militarily, they still have quite a lot of fight left in them. And many of the political and strategic goals that the president has set out had not been met. Yeah, it's interesting that, isn't it? Because you see again and again the stats that the Pentagon come up with and that Pete Hegseth talks about X number of launchers have been destroyed, this proportion of the capability of the Navy and the Air Force of the Iranian state, et cetera, et cetera.