Hey, Trump: Fire Hegseth

Making Hegseth the fall guy for a poorly planned war in Iran could be the quickest pathway to a cease-fire deal.

President Trump is in a jam. He can’t figure out how to wriggle out of the Iran war he started on February 28, which is turning into the worst fiasco of Trump’s two presidential terms. Oil prices are soaring, stocks are sinking and Trump looks like he’s losing control.

One way out is to fire Pete Hegseth, the preening Defense Secretary who is the most vocal champion of the war among Trump’s sycophantic appointees.

As Defense Secretary, Hegseth is second in the military chain of command. Other than Trump, he’s the person most responsible for any decision about going to war and how to prosecute a war once it’s underway.

As Trump threatened to attack Iran and ordered the buildup of US forces in the Persian Gulf region in January and February, Hegseth had to be the main cheerleader either goading Trump on or telling him what he wanted to hear. The Iran war belongs to Hegseth as much as it belongs to Trump.

[The Weekly WTF: Hegseth asks God for “overwhelming violence”]

There’s a lot of reporting on the warnings raised in the runup to the war by Gen. Dan Caine, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. Caine reportedly warned Trump that a war could bring US casualties and become an open-ended political mess. He also downplayed the ease of overthrowing the Iranian regime. And the Pentagon’s war planners have known for decades that Iran’s ability to close the Strait of Hormuz to oil shipments is a dangerous asymmetric capability, no matter how undermatched Iran might be militarily. By all available evidence, Caine—who is not in the chain of command—did his job, which is to make sure the president understood the pros and cons of any military operation.

The two civilians who give military orders—Trump and Hegseth—disregarded the threats their military advisors pointed out. And now, many of those threats have materialized just as predicted, as Iran wreaks havoc with world energy supplies and the United States is short on solutions.

By military standards, the Iran war isn’t going badly. US and Israeli forces are steadily and seriously degrading Iran’s military capabilities and curtailing its ability to cause trouble throughout the Middle East.

By the standards Trump set, however, the war is going terribly. That falls on Hegseth, a civilian appointee whose job is to communicate his department’s activities to the public and to Congress in a way that engenders widespread support. Grade: F.

When Trump announced the start of the war on February 28, he basically said the theocratic Iranian regime would be gone in short order. Five weeks later, it’s still there, with no sign of losing power.

[Trump pranks financial markets, again]

A few days later, on March 3, Trump said “we expect a very swift conclusion.” He didn’t define “swift,” but markets interpreted that as a few weeks, which is why the price of oil and other commodities rose only modestly at first.

Trump’s biggest failing, so far, has been total obliviousness to Iran’s domination of the Strait of Hormuz. That has shut in about 20% of the world’s oil supply. Trump did absolutely nothing to prepare anybody for this, and it’s blazingly apparent now that he didn’t know what he was doing. Oil prices have jumped from $80 per barrel during the first few days of the war to nearly $110, as Trump’s stupidity sinks in and traders realize Trump’s promises of a short war were magical thinking.

Trump should blame himself for this, but as we know, Trump never accepts blame for anything or admits a mistake.

That leaves Hegseth. The “secretary or war,” as the overcompensating Hegseth fancies himself, was right there with Trump, downplaying the threat assessments and imagining the oil would somehow keep flowing. Firing him would give Trump the opportunity to say it was his defense secretary who made these terrible miscalculations. With Hegseth gone, Trump could install somebody he characterizes as less crazy, and make a cease-fire deal with Iran, saying that’s what he wanted all along. Only the bellicose Hegseth temporarily steered him in the wrong direction.

[Trump’s 6 craziest Iran war statements]

The uniformed military would certainly cheer (silently). Hegseth is a tyrant who has been firing accomplished admirals and generals for no stated reason, probably for the unstated reason that he wants principled professionals out of the way so he can run the Pentagon like a squad of brownshirts.

Hegseth is already becoming the Robert McNamara of the Iran war, the guy who sold an easy war that turned out to be nothing of the sort. And he’s doing it with about half of McNamara’s intelligence. If the Iran war doesn’t become a debacle, something else will, because Hegseth is a child playing with a flamethrower.

Trump recently fired two Cabinet member, Attorney General Pam Bondi and Homeland Secretary Kristi Noem. Politico reports that he may soon fire others, including Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick and Labor Secretary Lori Chavez-DeRemer. Hegseth, alas, is not known to be on the list of Trump’s endangered aides.

Trump’s own hubris may prevent him from seeing the risk Hegseth poses to his legacy and political standing. After all, they are Brothers in Buffoonery. But Hegseth has already brought Trump down, or at least enabled Trump to bring himself down. It’s going to get worse.