At a solemn 9/11 memorial ceremony at the Pentagon on Friday, President Donald Trump and Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth delivered speeches marking the 25th anniversary of the terrorist attacks — while defending their deeply unpopular war with Iran.
Trump repeated his refrain that the U.S. is winning the war against Iran, which is now in its seventh month after the breakdown of several rounds of peace negotiations.
“We’re being tested today, and we’re winning that test very handily,” Trump said in a speech intended to pay tribute to the 184 people who were killed inside the Pentagon and on American Airlines Flight 77 on Sept. 11, 2001.
Later, the president acknowledged the military service of those who participated in the U.S. “war on terror,” adding, “And we salute the service members working right now to ensure the world’s No. 1 sponsor of terror, the Islamic Republic of Iran, will never ever have a nuclear weapon.”
Hegseth went further in touting U.S. action in Iran during his remarks. He depicted the U.S. as a country under existential threat from its enemies, including, he said, “from Islamic terrorists abroad and at home.”
He said the U.S. remains “vigilant” to those threats as he pivoted to Iran.
“Over the past six months, we have laid waste to the world’s most prolific state sponsor of terrorism,” Hegseth said. “Our warriors have fought an Islamic theocracy that has wished us death for nearly half a century, that cheered on 9/11 — a regime that has sponsored terrorist attacks against Americans for decades, killing thousands including our comrades in Iraq and Afghanistan.”
He then cited purported victories that the U.S. has notched in the war as he credited Trump.
“The United States killed their leaders, destroyed their air force, and their navy rests at the bottom of the sea. Their defenses are gone,” Hegseth said. “We’re still sending terrorists where they belong — to hell — and tankers to the bottom of the ocean where they belong, and we are ensuring that Iran will never have a nuclear weapon. The economic pressure tightens every day. We control the strait. We will finish this fight.”
The Iran war has grown exceedingly unpopular with an American public struggling with the rising cost of living, as Trump’s approval ratings sink, including among his base.
Despite Trump’s and Hegseth’s insistence that the U.S. is winning the Iran war, none of the goals that the administration had set out to achieve has been fully reached.
Trump’s attendance at the Pentagon event on Friday instead of the main ceremony at ground zero in New York City, where nearly 3,000 people died, marks a departure from how presidents have traditionally commemorated the day.
Vice President JD Vance attended the the ceremony in New York in Trump’s stead, alongside all living former presidents. Trump denied a New York Times report that he skipped the ceremony at ground zero because he wanted to deliver a speech at the nonpartisan event, which has a longstanding policy against allowing speeches.
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