Name: Iran's supreme leader 'likely disfigured', claims US Defence Secretary Pete Hegseth | BBC News
Uploaded: 2026-03-13T16:59:42.000Z
Duration: 7 min 9 s
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defense Secretary Pete Hegseth says America will carry out more strikes on Iran today than any other day.

Adverbs of degree

He's just been briefing journalists at the Pentagon.

He says the United States and Israel have hit 15,000 targets since launching their campaign two weeks ago.

He also said Iran's new Supreme Leader, Mushtava Khamenei was wounded and likely disfigured.

Asked about the strike on a school on the first day of the war in the Minab district in which more than 100 girls were reported, he said an ongoing investigation was being carried out by an officer outside centcom.

There have been several explosions that have been heard across Tehran over the past few hours.

State television reported a major blast close to a Al Quds Day rally in Tehran, an annual protest in support of Palestinians and against Israel.

One person is reported to have been killed.

Let's hear some of what the Defense Secretary had to say.

Their missiles, their missile launchers and drones being destroyed or shot out of the sky.

Their one way attack drones yesterday down 95%.

And as the world is seeing, they are exercising sheer desperation in the straits of of Hormuz.

We have been dealing with it and don't need to worry about it.

Soon and very soon all of Iran's defense companies will be destroyed.

Desperate and hiding, they've gone underground, cowering.

We know the new so called, not so supreme leader is wounded and likely disfigured.

He put out a statement yesterday, a weak one actually, but

there was no voice and there was no video.

We will keep pressing, we will keep pushing, keep advancing.

So another confident, bullish defense of the administration's war aims from Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth.

Let's speak to our White House reporter Bernd.

We don't need to worry about the disruption in the Gulf, said Pete Hegseth.

There are a lot of European governments at the moment who are intensely worried about it burnt as are huge portions of the US public.

In the last few days there had been some reporting that the Pentagon and the Trump administration had perhaps underestimated Iran's willingness and capacity to close the Strait of Hormuz, which of course has huge impact in economically around the globe as well as domestically here in the U.S.

so I think what the Secretary and General Kaine were trying to do was reassure the public and the world, other governments, that they are degrading Iran's military capacity to a point where it doesn't pose a strait to shipping in the Strait of Hormuz and therefore to petrol prices around the world.

But at the very least, any disruption or even any kind of diminishing of traffic going through the Strait of Hormuz has a huge economic impact, you know, even if the strait is.

We'll hear more from the Pentagon and from the White House in the coming days.

That's really a very important part of their communications effort at the moment.

It is true that the US Military, together with Israel, is degrading significantly Iran's ability to fire back.

But the US president told G7 leaders in a virtual meeting on Wednesday that Iran was about to surrender.

Nobody knows who the leader is in Iran, he said, so there is no one that can announce the surrender.

There seems to be a disconnect, it seems to me, from what the administration is saying and what the realities are on the ground.

Because if we look at the pictures today from Iran, we've got Ali Larijani circulating among thousands of people that are out on the street and no sign at all that the administration or the regime in Iran is about to fall.

The message we heard from Iran's Supreme Leader yesterday, in which he didn't appear, but that message was.

Was very defiant and really showed no sign that Iran was willing to surrender.

I think the other main unanswered question is what surrender actually looks like to the Trump administration and then what happens afterwards?

You know, while Secretary Hexseth and General Kaine provided very detailed point of view just in terms of the military aspect of this conflict and the number, the ability of Iran's navy and air force and missile forces to operate, what they didn't really give any detail on is what the day after looks like.

President Trump had at one point suggested that there could be kind of an Iranian version of Venezuela's Del C.

But by the Pentagon's own admissions, Iran's leadership has been decimated.

So it's not really clear who that moderate voice could be or how they would rise to power given the new Supreme Leader statement yesterday.

I think that's perhaps the primary unanswered question on the part of the Pentagon and the Trump administration.

As things stand now, will they care about some of the voices now coming from Europe?

But that they're not giving them enough information on decisions they're taking.

The one to wave sanctions on Russian oil at sea was reportedly given to European leaders just this morning.

And of course, there are implications for European forces that are currently in the Middle east region.

Will that criticism, the strength of that criticism that's starting to grow, bother the White House?

Well, I certainly think they'll, they'll hear the criticism.

You know, yesterday, for example, we saw the first French military casualty from an Iranian strike on a target in Iraq.

And I think that's something that will be discussed with the US Government, that these military casualties as well as the economic impact isn't something necessarily that the, the administration had at least publicly warned Europe about.

But at the same time, the administration and Secretary Hegseth in particular have been very bullish on this conflict.

And they, they have said repeatedly now that they're going to keep going until their military objectives are met.

So I think even in the face of European protest or European criticism about the way this conflict is being handled, certainly it'll keep going in the short term.

I think the last thing the administration would want was would to be seen as kind of holding back as a result of criticism from allies.

Of course, this administration, you know, they are very keen to say they have an America first foreign policy, and

I think that's going to drive their decision making going forward.

Bernie Besman in Washington, thank you very much for that.

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Iran's supreme leader 'likely disfigured', claims US Defence Secretary Pete Hegseth | BBC News

desperate

impact

conflict

force