President Donald Trump and Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth tied the ongoing war with Iran to the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks during 25th-anniversary remarks Friday at the Pentagon — casting today’s fight as a continuation of the war on terror that began a quarter-century ago.

The ceremony marked the 184 people killed at the Pentagon and aboard American Airlines Flight 77. Traditional presidential Ground Zero attendance in New York went instead to Vice President JD Vance, who stood with living former presidents. Trump denied a New York Times report that he skipped Ground Zero because the nonpartisan memorial bars speeches, according to MS NOW.

“Today we renew the sacred oath that we first swore in their names a quarter of a century ago, we will never, ever forget. That’s why we fight today,” Trump said, per the New York Post.

“We’re being tested today, and we’re winning that test very handily,” he added, according to MS NOW. Trump also saluted service members ensuring “the world’s number one sponsor of terror, the Islamic Republic of Iran, will never ever have a nuclear weapon,” The Hill reported.

Hegseth spoke first and went further. “Over the past six months, we have laid waste to the world’s most prolific state sponsor of terrorism… that cheered on 9/11… killing thousands, including our comrades in Iraq and Afghanistan,” he said, as attributed across MS NOW and The Hill.

“The United States killed their leaders, destroyed their air force, and their navy rests at the bottom of the sea… We’re still sending terrorists where they belong — to hell — and tankers to the bottom of the ocean… We control the strait. We will finish this fight,” Hegseth said, per MS NOW. He also claimed vigilance against “Islamic terrorists abroad and at home.”

The Iran war is past roughly six months and into its seventh. Trump said earlier this week he sees the conflict lasting until the November midterms — a timeline Insanity Developing has already covered separately — then ending “immediately” afterward, per The Hill. Memorials remember the dead; war messaging at those ceremonies is also politics, and the administration used Friday’s Pentagon stage to sell an unfinished fight.

Sources