Hegseth on U.S. boots on the ground in Iran

Despite the administration's claim that it obliterated Iran's nuclear infrastructure in June, international monitors estimate that Iran still has more than 970 pounds of nearly bomb-grade uranium. Is it possible to achieve the objectives President Trump has set before you if we don't locate and obtain and extract the highly enriched uranium?

There's a lot of different ways we can get after that. They've used a conventional umbrella of missiles that was growing every single day, their production capacity, to try to cover over their nuclear blackmail ambitions. As far as how you get at that nuclear option, we'll make sure that their nuclear ambitions are never achieved. Will we take it out ourselves? Oh, I would never tell you or anybody else what our options are. See, that's another thing. People keep asking. It's a legitimate question. It's a very fair question. People ask, boots on the ground? No boots on the ground. Four weeks, two weeks, six weeks. Go in. Go in. President Trump knows, I know you don't tell the enemy. You don't tell the press. You don't tell anybody what your limits would be on an operation. We're willing to go as far as we need to in order to be successful. Do we have any overt or covert forces inside Iran now? I wouldn't tell you that if we did. The only reason I ask is earlier this week you said no. Is that still the answer? Yeah, that's still the answer, but we reserve the right-- and we would be completely unwise if we did not reserve the right to take any particular option, whether it included boots on the ground or no boots on the ground. CBS News contributor and former CIA officer Elliot Ackerman joins me now. I'm always happy to have you with us, Elliot. You listen to an interview like that differently than I do. You have different experiences. You have a different mindset about what you're hearing. What struck you, if anything, about my conversation, some 30 minutes with the defense secretary? Well, I one thing that struck me is this conflation that if we only drop enough bombs on Iran or only lethal enough that that will bring about the conditions for an unconventional surrender. If we look at the history of American wars, whether it's Vietnam, Iraq, Afghanistan, the challenge wasn't that we didn't have enough military capability or weren't lethal enough. The challenge was a political challenge, that our military tools couldn't affect the type of political conditions that would allow us to declare victory in those wars. And thus far, I think the political outcome that will allow the United States to declare victory hasn't been articulated by this administration. What I heard frequently, Elliot, was the defense secretary telling me what this conflict isn't. It's not Iraq. It's not Afghanistan. What I yearn to hear more of, what it is. I couldn't agree with you more, Major. I think not only do I yearn to hear that, I think as the longer this goes on and the more it costs in blood and treasure, the American people are going to demand to know what it is, particularly if there is talk of US boots on the ground. And are you operationally as you think about this, Elliott, in agreement with lots of people who are much smarter about this than I am who say if you are going, as the US intends to, to dramatically end or frustrate for years and years and years Iran's pursuit of nuclear weapons, you have to get the highly enriched uranium out? Is that something you believe is true? I think that's absolutely true, particularly if we have conditions on the ground inside of Iran where the regime continues to cling to power or even if you have something that metastasizes in a type of civil war in Iran. But we can't have that weapons-grade uranium loose in Iran. It's too much of a liability for the United States and the region. And, of course, Israel would be as concerned about that as we are, and they might jointly or independently also have means or motives to try to pursue it. What do you make, if anything, Elliot, of this announcement of a new supreme leader, one of the sons of the slain Ayatollah Ali Khamenei? Well, I think there was a hope early on in the initial salvos of this campaign that perhaps the regime could topple quickly, that you might see a resumption of protests like we saw in January and the Iranian people making good on what the administration has called this generational opportunity. The more time that passes from the initiation of this campaign, the more it seems unlikely that you're going to have that type of a popular uprising to include the announcement of a new supreme leader. So it seems that the regime is dug in, and this conflict seems as though it's going to go on and on.

Elliot Ackerman, always a pleasure, sir. Thank you very much. Thank you.