Within a week, the US and Israel “will have complete control over Iranian skies,” US War Secretary Pete Hegseth asserted on Wednesday during a press conference at the Pentagon alongside Gen. Dan Caine, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, exclaiming that Iran was “toast.”

Hegseth also promised to rain “death and destruction” down on Iran, and vowed that the US can keep fighting “as long as we need to,” although he admitted that the US “can’t stop everything” fired by Tehran, hinting at the likelihood of future US casualties and further damage to American assets.

Iran is “toast, and they know it,” Hegseth said in comments to reporters on the fifth day of the US-Israeli war against Iran, “or at least, soon enough, they will know it.”

He stressed that the US and Israel “have only just begun” hunting and degrading Iranian capabilities, but that soon enough they will have “uncontested airspace.”

That means “we will fly all day, all night, day and night, finding, fixing and finishing the missiles and defense-industrial base of the Iranian military. Finding and fixing their leaders, and their military leaders,” Hegseth said.

He said that Iranian leaders will look up and only see US and Israeli airpower, “every minute of every day until we decide that it’s over.”

“Iran will be able to do nothing about it,” he warned. “Death and destruction from the sky. All day long.” US pilots “have maximum authorities granted personally by the president and yours truly,” he added. Rules of engagement “are designed to unleash American power, not shackle it.”

“This was never meant to be a fair fight, and it is not a fair fight,” Hegseth continued. “We are punching them when they’re down, which is exactly how it should be.”

This campaign “has seven times the intensity” of Israel’s June operation against Iran, the war secretary added. “More and larger waves are coming; we are just getting started. We are accelerated.”

Once air supremacy is established, the US will begin dropping 500-, 1000- and 2000-pound precision bombs, of which the US has a nearly unlimited stockpile, said Hegseth.

US stockpiles of stand-off guided missiles and Patriot missiles remain “extremely strong,” he said, amid concerns the campaign against Iran could deplete American defenses ahead of a potential war with China.

“We........

© The Times of Israel