CNN anchor flags major question Hegseth scrambles to avoid: 'Didn't go anywhere near that'

CNN's John Berman highlighted a major question about the Iran war that Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth steered clear of addressing.

Hegseth and Gen. Dan Caine, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, provided an update Tuesday morning about Operation Epic Fury, but the defense secretary refused to address a definitive timeline for the conflict.

"I will say the main headline that I took away from that is that Secretary Hegseth did not want to put any timeline on an end here," Berman said. "President Trump who has been saying it is very nearly complete this mission. Secretary Hegseth did not go anywhere near that, except to say that it's for the president to decide when it ends, and it won't be endless, this conflict with Iran."

His colleague Zach Cohen agreed, and he noticed that Hegseth failed to offer any new information about the bombing of a school that killed at least 175 people, most of them children.

"Like you, I noticed how Hegseth walked a fine line, declining to really put a time frame or a timeline on U.S. military operations," Cohen said. "Iran but also trying to emphasize that there will be no half measures and that essentially it won't stop until the enemy is totally defeated. So not going outright and contradicting what the president said yesterday, but trying to reassert that the military plans to continue hitting its targets until President Donald Trump decides that the war is effectively over, and as you mentioned, Donald Trump saying yesterday, the war could be over in the coming days sooner than he expected."

"I noticed Hegseth declining to really get into the specifics of the investigation into that strike against the school that killed over 100 children," Cohen added. "It appears again, the president saying yesterday that suggesting that Iran has the kind of missile that hit the school, when in reality the U.S. is the only country in this conflict using Tomahawk missiles."

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