Hegseth's own words blow up in his face — and take Trump's war claim with them: analysis

Pete Hegseth went out Wednesday to sell America on Donald Trump's Iran triumph— and ended up accidentally dismantling it, according to a new analysis.

The Defense Secretary insisted that Trump's threat to erase Iranian civilization is what brought Tehran back to the negotiating table.

"That type of threat is what brought them to the place where they effectively said, ‘We want to cut this deal,'" Hegseth told reporters, preening about American killing power with what New Republic analyst Greg Sargent called "unnerving relish and bloodlust."

But he noted Iran was already negotiating with Trump before the war started.

According to Sargent, citing a New York Times investigation, Trump sabotaged those pre-war talks himself — convinced by Benjamin Netanyahu that the war would be quick and glorious, and by his own team that nothing short of regime change would do. Iran had been prepared to make real concessions on nuclear development, and Trump walked away anyway.

"Trump’s approach to the talks made success impossible—deliberately," Sargent declared.

Iran's regime survived, radicalized, and now negotiates from a position of greater confidence, he said. The ceasefire terms appear more favorable to Tehran than the deal Trump could have had without firing a shot.

"The civilizational threat did not factor into the ceasefire," Center for International Policy senior fellow Sina Toossi told Sargent flatly.

Sargent concluded that despite the war showcasing "awesome technological prowess," it failed to deliver what Trump and Hegseth promised — that American military power and the threat of it could force anyone to do anything. They set out to prove otherwise, he wrote, "and at this, too, they failed miserably."