Donald Trump is secretly asking close advisers about whether Pete Hegseth and General Dan Caine should be fired after the midterms, even as he weighs restarting the bombing of Iran.
The president has been quizzing allies on the performance of his defense secretary and his Joint Chiefs chairman, the two men who assured him the war would be wrapped up well before the midterms, according to the Atlantic.
A fresh round of strikes could come within days of Tuesday’s vote, advisers said.
As Republicans face the real possibility of losing the House and Senate, Trump has concluded the Iran war would be partly to blame and trained his attention on the advisers who promised a quick and decisive fight.
‘Hegseth is good at telling the president what he wants to hear,’ one of the outside advisers said, and others close to Trump believe the defense secretary has painted the war in rosy terms to keep him happy.
Hegseth, Caine and Admiral Brad Cooper, the head of Central Command, were at the White House last week walking Trump and Vice President JD Vance through a set of options engineered to let the president declare victory.
Meanwhile, Trump and Benjamin Netanyahu had a blunt phone call on Saturday about the state of talks with Iran and how fast to go back to war, one Israeli and one American source told Axios.
Netanyahu is pushing the president to strike Iran immediately after Tuesday’s midterms, while Trump wants to let the negotiations run, a strategy that worries the Israeli prime minister.
‘Hegseth is good at telling the president what he wants to hear,’ one of the outside advisers said, and others close to Trump believe the defense secretary has painted the war in rosy terms to keep him happy
The choices run from strikes lasting a few hours to a campaign of several weeks, with one scenario aimed at Iran’s nuclear program
Trump and Benjamin Netanyahu had a blunt phone call on Saturday about the state of talks with Iran and how fast to go back to war
If Trump strikes Iran, the choices run from strikes lasting a few hours to a campaign of several weeks with one scenario aimed at Iran’s nuclear program. The other option is holding the naval blockade at the Strait of Hormuz in place while dangling the threat of more, or walking away.
A longer campaign would go back after Iran’s defenses and its infrastructure, which the administration is expected to argue serves military as well as civilian purposes.
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The shorter strikes carried out since the weeks-long campaign that began in late February have only stiffened Tehran’s resolve and drawn retaliation against American assets and allies across the region.
Vance wrote to Mohsen Rezaei, Iran’s security chief, last Sunday proposing a return to direct negotiations with the nuclear program on the table from the outset.
The vice president did not spell out what Tehran would get in return.
Hegseth has spent the run-up proving his loyalty, firing Army Lieutenant General Brett Sylvia, the Joint Staff’s director of planning.
His move comes after officials said Sylvia failed polygraphs tied to a leak investigation.
Sylvia is one of more than two dozen generals and admirals forced out on the secretary’s watch.
The Daily Mail revealed last week that Hegseth's aggressive leadership style has prompted senior officials to keep dossiers stashed for a looming Democratic congressional probe into his tenure.
Pentagon sources told the Daily Mail they and their colleagues have spent much of the last 22 months compiling emails, memos and meeting notes.
The files detail times the defense secretary and his inner circle allegedly ignored strategic and legal advice, berated the experts who gave it, withheld information from Congress and the public, and threatened the careers of subordinates who either challenged his decisions or struck him as too woke, fat, queer or disloyal.
They figure the paper trail, plus a list of potential witnesses from inside the department, will come in handy if Democrats retake the House in November and, as expected, open an impeachment investigation in 2027.
As Republicans face the real possibility of losing the House and Senate, Trump has concluded the Iran war would be partly to blame and trained his attention on the advisers who promised a quick and decisive fight
Behind the war planning sits a White House gripped by a grim mood, rocked by turnover, factional knife fights and anxiety about losing control of Congress.
Trump has dismissed the polling that shows his unpopularity and raged that his message is not breaking through.
He has retreated into the company of loyalists including Natalie Harp, who has shifted her desk into his cluttered private dining room, and housing chief Bill Pulte, who turns up in his Air Force One cabin with poster boards and AI-generated memes.
There is a template for what happens next: after Democrats swept the 2006 midterms in a verdict on Iraq, George W. Bush forced out Donald Rumsfeld the day after the vote, then ordered a troop surge two months later.