At a Pentagon press briefing, Defense Sec. Pete Hegseth was asked about pictures showing highly enriched uranium being moved out of Fordow before the U.S.-Iran strike.
00:00Just a quick question. There's public imagery available saying that highly enriched uranium was moved out of Fordo before the strikes. Is that accurate? Have you seen that? And Mr. Chairman, a question for you. Have you been pressured to change your assessment or give a more rosy intelligence assessment to us by any political factors, whether it's the president or the secretary? And if you were, would you do that?
00:26Yeah, well, that one's easy. No, no, I have not. And no, I would not. My job as the chairman is to offer a range of options to the president and the national command authority to deliver the risks associated with each of those and then take the orders of the national command authority and go execute them.
00:47So this I've never been pressured by the president or the secretary to do anything other than tell them exactly what I'm thinking. And that's exactly what I've done.
00:58There's nothing that I've seen that suggests that what we didn't hit exactly what we wanted to hit in those locations.
01:04That's not the question, though. It's about highly enriched uranium. Do you have certainty that all the highly enriched uranium was inside the Fordo mountain or some of it because there were satellite photos that showed more than a dozen trucks there two days in advance?
01:20Are you certain none of that highly enriched uranium was moved?
01:23Of course, we're watching every single aspect. But, Jennifer, you've been about the worst, the one who misrepresents the most intentionally.
01:31What the president says. I'm familiar.
01:35I was the first to report about the ventilation shafts on Saturday night. And, in fact, I was the first to describe the B-2 bombers, the refueling, the entire mission with great accuracy. So I take issue with that.
01:48I appreciate you acknowledging that this was the most successful mission based on operational security that this department has done since you've been here. And I appreciate that.
01:59So we're looking at all aspects of intelligence and making sure we have a sense of what was where.
