Washington: US Defence Secretary Pete Hegseth clashed with reporters over their coverage of the bombing of Iran’s nuclear sites at a defiant news conference that provided new details on the impressive military operation but shed little light on the damage inflicted.

Hegseth, a former Fox News anchor, channelled his old role as he insisted journalists should be filing stories about the complex logistics of the mission and the bravery of the pilots, rather than seeking to ascertain how much Iran’s nuclear assets had been degraded.

US Defence Secretary Pete Hegseth speaks at a news conference with Joint Chiefs Chairman General Dan Caine at the Pentagon.Credit: AP

“President Trump directed the most complex and secretive military operation in history,” he said. “How about we celebrate that? How about we talk about how special America is, that only we have these capabilities?

“How many stories have been written but how hard it is to fly a plane for 36 hours? Has MSNBC done that story? Has Fox? Have we done the story of how hard that is? Have we done it two or three times so the American people understand? How about how hard it is to shoot a drone from an F-15 or 16 or F-22 or F-35? Or how hard it is to refuel midair?”

Hegseth accused journalists of irresponsibility by publishing stories based on leaked or classified information, such as a preliminary Defence Intelligence Agency assessment that suggested with a low degree of confidence that Iran’s nuclear program may only have been set back by months.

This was done to make President Donald Trump look bad, Hegseth claimed. “It’s, like, in your DNA and in your blood to cheer against Trump,” he said, accusing the media of “hunting for scandals, trying to find wedges and spin stories”.

Hegseth grew frustrated when asked about satellite imagery that showed trucks lined up at the site in the days before the operation, and whether the government was certain it had destroyed all of Iran’s enriched uranium inside the underground nuclear facility at Fordow.

“There’s nothing that I’ve seen that suggests that we didn’t hit exactly what we wanted to hit in those locations,” Hegseth said.

“That’s not the question though,” replied Fox News reporter Jennifer Griffin. “Are you certain none of that highly enriched uranium was moved?”

Hegseth then went on the attack: “Of course we’re watching every single aspect. But Jennifer, you’ve been about the worst. The one who misrepresents the most intentionally what the president says.”

Griffin noted she had reported key details of the complex military operation accurately and before others. “So I take issue with that,” she said.

On the key question of whether the trucks removed uranium, Trump later said the trucks seen in satellite images were, in fact, workers installing concrete caps over the ventilation shafts to try to ward off an attack.

“Nothing was taken out of facility. Would take too long, too dangerous, and very heavy and hard to move!” he wrote on his Truth Social page. But he didn’t provide the source of his information.

Confirming details of the operation for the first time, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Dan Caine said the US targeted two ventilation shafts at Fordow, which the Iranians had tried to cover up with concrete days earlier.

On each side, the first bomb forcibly removed the cap, while the next four were fired into the shaft and exploded underground. A sixth was kept as a spare. “All six weapons at each vent at Fordow went exactly where they were intended to go,” Caine said.

But Caine did not discuss intelligence about what may have been destroyed underground. It was not his job to perform battle damage assessment, which was done by the intelligence community, he said.

Hegseth acknowledged nobody knew for sure the status of assets buried under the bombed mountain at Fordow, and was relying on satellite imagery and their knowledge of the destructive power of the bombs.

“Anyone with two eyes, some ears and a brain can recognise that kind of firepower with that specificity, at that location, and others, is going to have a devastating effect,” he said.

“If you want to know what’s going on at Fordow you better go there and get a big shovel because no one’s under there, able to assess, and everyone’s using reflections of what they see.”

Hegseth also repeated comments from Iran’s Foreign Ministry saying the facilities had been “badly damaged”, as well as remarks form the Israeli Defence Force, Israel’s Atomic Energy Commission and the UN’s International Atomic Energy Agency.

He also revealed just 44 US soldiers defended the Al Udeid Air Base from Iran’s missile attack earlier this week – the oldest being a 28-year-old captain and the youngest a 21-year-old private – after most troops were cleared from the expected target zone.

The debate over the extent of the damage to the three targeted sites flowed from Trump’s declaration, shortly after the operation, that Iran’s nuclear program had been “completely and totally obliterated”.

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The preliminary intelligence report, revealed by CNN and The New York Times, appeared to cast doubt on that, even though it was based on incomplete information, with a high degree of uncertainty.

Trump, who has raged about the media’s reporting on the operation, said the Thursday morning (10pm AEST) appearance by Hegseth and Caine was “one of the greatest, most professional and most ‘confirming’ News Conferences I have ever seen”.

“The Fake News should fire everyone involved in this Witch Hunt, and apologise to our great warriors, and everyone else!” Trump posted.

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