Name: Hegseth says anyone helping Iran's war efforts will be "confronted strongly"
Uploaded: 2026-03-07T21:36:02.000Z
Duration: 9 min 32 s
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Today I interviewed Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth for this Sunday's 60 Minutes.

We talked about many aspects of the war in the Middle east, but we started with new reporting.

CBS reporting that Russia is providing intelligence to Iran so that it can track movements of US Military personnel.

We have the best intelligence in the world.

We're aware of who's talking to who, why they're talking to them, how accurate that information might be, how we factor factor that into our battle plans, our CENTCOM commander, so we know what's going on.

And the president has an incredible knack at knowing how to mitigate those risks.

And so the American people can rest assured their commander in chief is well aware of who's talking to who.

And anything that shouldn't be happening, whether it's in public or back channeled, is being confronted and confronted strongly.

The American people can therefore expect conversations with the Russians to stop this.

Well, President Trump, as people have seen, has a unique relationship with a lot of world leaders, where he can get things done that other presidents, certainly Joe Biden, never could have.

And through direct conversations or indirect through him one to one, or through his cabinet messages, definitely can be delivered.

Does this put US Personnel in any more danger than they otherwise would be?

Well, the Russian involvement, no one's putting us in danger.

But the only ones that need to be worried right now are Iranians that think they're going to live.

Moving around our takeout studio apartment.

I'm very happy to say that CBS News national security analyst Aaron McLean been on the program before.

But you just heard the defense secretary say, yes, we're aware of Russian efforts to assist the Iranians on positioning the US Military assets.

How do you evaluate that answer and this Russian involvement?

Well, it's a very serious development, Major.

The Russians, through their four years of war in Ukraine right now, have developed a very sophisticated apparatus of scanning through all the data collected by all the sensors out there and figuring out how to target individuals through that.

So if they are supplying that kind of information to the Iranians, it's a concern.

I take the secretary of war at his word, that our people are aware of that, that they are Tracking that.

But anything like that has to be taken extremely seriously.

So when you hear that, you do think to yourself there is a higher risk profile.

Anytime you have a major power adversary like Russia coming in to assist the Iranians, that's a concern.

The Russians, even though their progress has been halting in Ukraine over the years, have real capabilities and real capabilities on the targeting front as well.

There's been a lot of conversation about interceptors.

Help my audience understand why they're important, where they're important, and what else we should know.

So the United States military throughout the region to include critically on this line of bases here that we have, stretching from the northern part of Iraq through Kuwait, down through Qatar, Saudi Arabia, into the UAE and beyond, is protected by a multi layered shield of air defenses.

This is there because Iran, of course, has substantial ballistic missile and drone capabilities to strike our bases, but

also civilian targets throughout the region.

The issue that we faced at the start of this conflict was that the interceptors are very expensive.

Now, Iranian ballistic missiles are also expensive, but the drones are very cheap.

So there's a math problem when you're firing these very expensive interceptors at relatively cheap munitions.

Our reservoirs of these things, our magazines, are not infinitely deep.

However, sitting here about seven days into the start of this campaign, we actually seem to be winning the fight in the sense that we're not just.

The United States military and its partners in the region are not just sitting there passively firing interceptors as missiles come in.

But the United States military is also targeting the archers, shooting the arrows down, if you'll permit the metaphor, in midair.

Going after the launchers, going after the missile storage sites in Iran, more straightforward.

And over time, that's our doctrine, to hammer the archers.

You see, as of yesterday afternoon, ballistic missile attacks from Saturday through Thursday, down 90%, drone attacks down 80%.

And the secretary told me that that tempo is going to increase because he said there is now supremacy over the skies of Iran.

The Israeli Air Force and the American Air Force can go wherever it wants and can target more precisely from overhead, as opposed from, let's say, the Med or someplace around here.

He said, the personnel here have enough interceptors, our allies will have enough interceptors for not just bases, but

the infrastructure, the oil infrastructure in that area.

Now, you do see some of our allies and partners in the region getting nervous.

These reserves of interceptors are not infinite.

It was very interesting to see in the last day or so the development of the president of Ukraine, Volodymyr Zelenskyy, offering support to partners in the region because who has experience shooting down Iranian drones?

Ukraine has experience shooting down because they were there.

That's right, Ukraine, excuse me, Iran supplies these drones to Russia, who fires them at Ukraine.

Ukraine has very limited interceptors for a variety of complicated, largely political reasons.

And so they've become very good at shooting down drones with drones developing tactics to make the most out of the limited resources that they have.

And they're now going to advise our partners in the region and us.

What should we watch for in the next 48 to 72 hours?

Yeah, so I want to tell you a story, major, about what's kind of a tale of two wars here.

We have this graphic here showing essentially the locations of major strikes that the United States and Israel have made in Iran.

Targeting naval targets here along the coast, missile targets here in the western mountain range of the country, one attack on a nuclear site in the center of the country, and

obviously we've all heard about the regime targets here around Tehran.

And then you have Iranian counter strikes all the way across the region here.

U.S. bases, diplomatic facilities, obviously hammering Israel.

And then there's a whole sub theater war going on between Israel and Hezbollah in southern Lebanon.

it really, even though the graphic makes it look as though essentially, you know, we're hitting them a lot and they're hitting us a lot, the reality is it's two very different approaches.

What you see over here is a relentless campaign targeting missiles, targeting the Iranian navy and targeting to a limited extent so far at least, their nuclear program also regime target.

Every time we hit these targets, the balance of power shifts slightly in favor of the U.

The Iranian strikes, on the other hand, though, you do see hits slipping through.

We had the tragic loss of six servicemen, six service members in Kuwait.

You see some harrowing footage of radar facilities being taken down in Bahrain, a few other things like that.

There's a degree of indiscriminateness to the Iranian targeting.

There's a lot of civilian targets, civilian airports, hotels, things like that.

It's designed essentially to harass, to cause alarm, to cause our allies to pressure us to bring things to a close.

But militarily the impact is much more limited on the U.

S Israel coalition through those kinds of strikes than the impact is on Iran through the sorts of strikes the coalition is running in Iran.

The balance of power every day shifts in favor of the United States and Israel.

How much do we know, Aaron, about how many munitions, either drone or missile are underground in Iran that they could pull up and add to their stockpiles above ground?