{"id":728876,"date":"2026-06-11T02:57:09","date_gmt":"2026-06-11T02:57:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/728876\/"},"modified":"2026-06-11T02:57:09","modified_gmt":"2026-06-11T02:57:09","slug":"negotiate-with-bombs-hegseth-defends-second-night-of-us-strikes-on-iran-us-israel-war-on-iran-news","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/728876\/","title":{"rendered":"\u2018Negotiate with bombs\u2019: Hegseth defends second night of US strikes on Iran | US-Israel war on Iran News"},"content":{"rendered":"

Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth has confirmed that the United States is launching strikes on \u201ckey facilities\u201d in Iran, framing the attacks as part of the ongoing negotiations for a permanent ceasefire.<\/p>\n

Hegseth spoke to reporters on Wednesday in Tampa, Florida, as he left the headquarters for the US Central Command (CENTCOM), which oversees military operations in the Middle East and parts of Asia.<\/p>\n

Recommended Stories list of 3 itemsend of list<\/p>\n

His remarks echoed the escalating rhetoric<\/a> of Republican President Donald Trump, who warned<\/a> earlier that Iran would \u201chave to pay the price\u201d for taking too long with the negotiations.<\/p>\n

\u201c\u200aCENTCOM \u2013 Central Command \u2013 will be busy tonight because President Trump said we will be hitting Iran hard, and we will be,\u201d Hegseth said.<\/p>\n

He explained that he had just reviewed the plans for Wednesday night\u2019s attack with Admiral Bradley Cooper, CENTCOM\u2019s commander.<\/p>\n

\u201c\u200aThose strikes that\u2019ll happen tonight will be strong. They will be clear,\u201d said Hegseth, who then suggested they may continue into a second day. \u201cIf they have to happen tomorrow night, they will be strong, and they will be clear.\u201d<\/p>\n

CENTCOM followed Hegseth\u2019s comments with a social media post, announcing \u201cadditional self-defense strikes\u201d at 5:15pm US Eastern time (21:00 GMT).<\/p>\n

\u201cThe strikes are in response to Iran\u2019s unwarranted and continued aggression,\u201d it wrote.<\/p>\n

Within minutes of those comments, Iran\u2019s IRNA media outlet reported explosions in Bandar Abbas, Qeshm, Gorgan and Hengam. Air defences were activated in the Fars region as well.<\/p>\n

Wednesday\u2019s attack will mark the second straight day of US attacks against Iran, fracturing the fragile truce struck on April 8.<\/p>\n

The US has been at war with Iran since February 28, when the Trump administration joined Israel in an unprovoked attack on the country.<\/p>\n

Both Israel and the US have argued that the attack was necessary to prevent Iran from obtaining a nuclear weapon, though Tehran has long denied seeking one.<\/p>\n

But the Trump administration has offered contradicting rationales for the war in the months since it began.<\/p>\n

At one point, US Secretary of State Marco Rubio suggested<\/a> that the US acted \u201cpre-emptively\u201d because it \u201cknew that there was going to be an Israeli action\u201d and it wanted to head off retaliation. Rubio has since walked back those remarks.<\/p>\n

Hegseth on Wednesday credited the upcoming strikes to frustration with Iran\u2019s negotiating tactics.<\/p>\n

\u201c\u200aAs President Trump said, they\u2019ve been tap-tap-tapping. You can see when someone\u2019s trying to tap-tap-tap on a deal,\u201d he said. \u201cInstead, they\u2019re going to have tap, tap, tap bombs dropping on key facilities in Iran from the United States of America.\u201d<\/p>\n

Since a temporary ceasefire was announced on April 8, much of the most intense fighting between the US and Iran has been paused.<\/p>\n

But this week\u2019s escalation began when an AH-64 Apache helicopter was downed near the Strait of Hormuz overnight on Monday.<\/p>\n

Trump on Tuesday blamed Iran for the helicopter\u2019s crash. Though no US service members were hurt, he said the US \u201cmust, of necessity, respond to this attack\u201d.<\/p>\n

In announcing a second round of attacks, Hegseth denied that the US sought to resume full-scale fighting. He instead framed the offensive as a means of kick-starting the stalled negotiations with Iran, offering a shifting rationale for the fighting.<\/p>\n

\u201cThat\u2019s not because we want to restart anything we don\u2019t have to restart,\u201d Hegseth said of Wednesday night\u2019s attack. \u201cIt\u2019s because the War Department is prepared to set the terms to ensure that we get the kind of deal President Trump expects.\u201d<\/p>\n

The two sides have differed over issues like the fate of Iran\u2019s nuclear programme and whether Iran would receive sanctions relief.<\/p>\n

Trump has repeatedly threatened to attack Iran\u2019s bridges and energy infrastructure, at one point warning that \u201ca whole civilization will die\u201d as a result of US attacks.<\/p>\n

Those comments have prompted human rights concerns. Intentionally targeting civilian infrastructure can be considered a war crime, and critics compared Trump\u2019s threats against the Iranian \u201ccivilization\u201d with genocidal remarks.<\/p>\n

Reporters confronted Hegseth with those concerns on Wednesday.<\/p>\n

\u201cYou just mentioned you\u2019re going to plan to hit them and strike them hard tonight,\u201d one reporter asked. \u201cIf the response is in hitting bridges, electrical infrastructure, how would that not be a war crime, potentially targeting civilian infrastructure?\u201d<\/p>\n

Hegseth dismissed the question as \u201cdisingenuous\u201d and accused the reporter of \u201cimpugning the motives\u201d of the US military. But he did not rule out that civilian infrastructure would be struck as part of Wednesday\u2019s attacks.<\/p>\n

Iran has signalled that it is not prepared to back down, and since the initial volley of US attacks this week, it has responded with strikes of its own on US bases in Kuwait, Jordan and Bahrain<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Many political commentators pointed to Hegseth\u2019s comments in Tampa as a sign of a return to \u201cgunboat diplomacy\u201d, the use of military force to seek political aims.<\/p>\n

\u201cIf we need to negotiate with bombs, we\u2019ll negotiate with bombs,\u201d Hegseth said.<\/p>\n

Al Jazeera correspondent Alan Fisher noted that those words marked a pivot for the Trump administration.<\/p>\n

\u201cMany people would argue that what happened overnight was certainly more than just the downing of a helicopter,\u201d Fisher said. \u201cNow, it appears that we\u2019ve moved on to a new phase of what was described to me by a Republican as the \u2018peace-fire\u2019.\u201d<\/p>\n

He emphasised that the Trump administration is not willing to say that the April 8 ceasefire is over. But the administration, Fisher said, appears to be seeking to use military attacks as leverage \u201cto create the diplomatic space for the deal that Donald Trump wants\u201d.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth has confirmed that the United States is launching strikes on \u201ckey facilities\u201d in…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":728877,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[8721,1376,43,5897,1259,14207,44,41,39,42,40,772,1690,206083],"class_list":["post-728876","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-headlines","tag-conflict","tag-donald-trump","tag-headlines","tag-iran","tag-middle-east","tag-military","tag-news","tag-top-news","tag-top-stories","tag-topnews","tag-topstories","tag-united-states","tag-us-canada","tag-us-israel-war-on-iran"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/728876","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=728876"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/728876\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/728877"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=728876"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=728876"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=728876"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}