War Secretary Pete Hegseth said that “there will be more casualties” in the U.S. operation against Iran, with seven American service members having died so far in the fighting.
“The president’s been right to say there will be casualties. Things like this don’t happen without casualties,” Hegseth said in an interview that aired on CBS News’s 60 Minutes on Sunday.
Hgseth’s comments come after U.S. Central Command announced on Sunday that a seventh U.S. service member had died as a result of “injuries received during the Iranian regime’s initial attacks across the Middle East” on March 1 in the war with Iran.
Last week, the United States and Israel launched strikes against Iran following months of tension between Tehran and Washington, which was heightened following President Donald Trump’s strikes on the country’s nuclear facilities last year. Iran retaliated to the U.S. and Israeli strikes by attacking Israel and Gulf nations, including Qatar and Saudi Arabia.
“There will be more casualties, and no one is — I mean, especially our generation knows what it’s like to see Americans come home in caskets, it’s — but that doesn’t weaken us one bit, it stiffens our spine and our resolve to say this is a fight we will finish,” Hegseth added.
This follows President Donald Trump witnessing the return of six service members’ bodies on Saturday at Dover Air Force Base in Delaware after they were killed in an Iranian drone strike.
Following the seventh casualty, announced Sunday evening, the U.S. State Department issued an order for non-emergency staff and families to leave Saudi Arabia, following a military projectile that fell onto a residential area. The attack killed two foreign-born residents and wounded 12 others in the Al-Kharj governorate.
Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi said on Sunday that Iran could defend itself if a U.S. ground incursion occurred.
“For the time being, we are capable enough. We have very brave soldiers, who are waiting for any enemy who enters into our soil to fight with them, and to kill them and destroy them,” Araghchi said on NBC’s Meet the Press.
Trump administration officials, including Trump himself, have not denied the possibility of sending ground troops into Iran.
“[It would] have to be [for] a very good reason. And I would say if we ever did that, they would be so decimated that they wouldn’t be able to fight at the ground level,” Trump told reporters on Saturday.
