US Defence Secretary calls strikes most complex military operation in history
Newshour
BBC
4.4 • 984 Ratings
🗓️ 26 June 2025
⏱️ 48 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
The White House has doubled down over its assessment of the Iran strike with the Trump administration slamming the leaked report that questioned how effective the US strike on Iran was.
Also in the programme: We speak to the Kenyan government following the killing of 16 protesters on Wednesday; and why is it so hard for women athletes to break the four-minute mile?
(Photo: US secretary of defence and the chairman of joint chiefs of staff holding a press conference. Credit: Reuters)
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Hello and welcome to NewsHour live from the BBC World Service in London. I'm Rebecca Kesb. |
| 0:09.5 | The US airstrikes on Iran's nuclear programme at the weekend were the most complex secretive military operation in history. |
| 0:17.9 | According to the US Defence Secretary Pete Hegsseth. He made the comments today at a press |
| 0:22.7 | conference in which he lambasted the journalists in the room for what he perceived as their lack of |
| 0:28.2 | enthusiasm and lack of praise for President Trump and their reporting of elite intelligence report |
| 0:34.2 | that suggested the mission may have had limited success. We'll have more on the |
| 0:38.8 | intelligence issues in a moment. First Secretary Hegeseth was speaking about an hour after the |
| 0:44.7 | supreme leader of Iran, Ayatollah Ali Hamenei, made his first video appearance since the war |
| 0:51.9 | with Israel. He downplayed the damage done to his nuclear program |
| 0:55.8 | by the US airstrikes. |
| 0:59.3 | The President of the United States exaggerated events in unusual ways, and it turns out |
| 1:05.6 | he needed this exaggeration. Anyone who's heard these words has understood there is another |
| 1:10.5 | truth behind them. The U.S. has failed to heard these words has understood there is another truth behind them. |
| 1:11.9 | The US has failed to take action and has not achieved their intended objective. |
| 1:17.1 | Well, within the past half an hour or so, the foreign minister of Iran, Abbas Aragchi, |
| 1:23.3 | said on state TV that Iran has no plans to meet with Donald Trump. |
| 1:28.6 | That's directly contradicting what President Trump said yesterday |
| 1:31.8 | when he said Washington was planning talks with Iran within the next week. |
| 1:36.4 | Mr. Aragchi did go on to say that there had been damage to the nuclear facilities in the country. |
| 1:44.0 | Well, so nearly two weeks on from the start of Israel's bombardment of Iran, what is the mood inside the country? |
| 1:50.1 | Our chief international correspondent Liz Doucet is in Tehran. |
| 1:54.0 | She's being allowed to report in the country on condition that none of her reports are used on BBC's Persian service. |
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