From The Times and the Sunday Times, this is the story.

I'm Manvina.

I liken Iran's predicament to a football team who scripted the first 20 plays of a game.

For Americans, this is becoming the soundtrack to the war in Iran.

The team knew what plays to run because their first few drives were scripted.

But now that the game has started and the Blitz is on, they don't know what plays to call.

A military briefing delivered in the style of a high school football coach giving a pep talk at half time.

Let alone how to get in the huddle and call those plays.

Iran's senior leaders are dead.

The so-called governing council that might have selected a successor,

dead, missing, or cowering in bunkers, too terrified to even occupy the same room.

As bombs rain down on Tehran, Pete Hegss, the United States Secretary of War, has become

the brash, boastful, belligerent voice of the conflict.

The Iranian Navy rests at the bottom of the Persian Gulf.

Combat ineffective, decimated, destroyed, defeated.

Pick your adjective.

While other members of the administration are running for cover,

as President Trump embarks on what could become the sort of forever war that he campaigned against,

the former Fox News host, Pete Hegesith, has emerged as the war's loudest cheerleader.

I called Pete, I called General Kane, I called a lot of our great people.

We have great people.

And I said, let's talk.

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