Hegseth and Caine play dueling roles as key architects of Iran strike
CNN
Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth and Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Dan Caine took contrasting approaches to advising President Trump on whether to bomb Iran.
Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth and Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Dan Caine approached a pair of lecterns in the Pentagon briefing room Sunday morning to detail the most significant military operation of President Donald Trump’s tenure in office. Hegseth spoke first, lavishing praise and congratulations on his boss in a made-for-television moment, a pressed American flag pocket square tucked into his lapel. He described Operation Midnight Hammer as an “overwhelming success” that “devastated the Iranian nuclear program” and “achieved destruction of capabilities” at the Fordow nuclear site. Caine, dressed in military uniform, offered sober and meticulous details and a timeline of the strikes targeting Iranian nuclear facilities. He urged patience, saying the battle damage assessment “is still pending, and it would be way too early for me to comment on what may or may not still be there.” The moment underscored their dueling approaches as Trump’s top military officials and what sources have described as a core difference between the two men. Trump, a connoisseur of stagecraft, has long heralded the importance of having top officials straight out of “central casting.” Hegseth, a former Fox News anchor, has played a visible role as the president deliberated US involvement, an opportunity that came after his first months in the job were marred by the Signal group chat scandal and upheaval among his staff. At the same time, Caine has emerged as a subtle, but trusted adviser behind the scenes. And as Trump weighed the biggest decision of his presidency, it was the qualities Caine demonstrated Sunday that he valued behind closed doors.
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