A group of Democratic senators has opened an investigation into Pentagon Secretary Pete Hegseth’s assault on federal programs and personnel tasked with mitigating civilian harm in US wars, cuts that helped pave the way for atrocities the American military has committed in Iran over the past seven weeks.
In a Monday letter led by Sens. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) and Chris Van Hollen (D-Md.), the Democratic lawmakers cite the US missile strike on an elementary school in southern Iran—which killed more than 100 children on the first day of the war—as evidence of the Trump administration’s “broader disregard for the strategic, legal, and moral imperative to minimize civilian harm.”
Prior to the start of the Iran war, the Democrats note in their letter, Hegseth “reportedly overruled top military leaders and made deep cuts to [the Department of Defense’s] mitigation and response (CHMR) programs, fired personnel at DoD’s Civilian Protection Center of Excellence (CPCoE) and slashed CHMR staff at the US combatant commands ‘by more than 90%.’”
“This included eliminating the entire civilian harm office at Joint Special Operations Command (JSOC), removing civilian harm specialists from target development strike teams, and reducing the team of 10 at US Central Command (CENTCOM) to only one full time staff,” the letter reads. “Your attempts to gut DoD’s civilian harm institutions contradicts more than a decade of bipartisan consensus and DoD-led reforms, initiated during the first Trump administration, to systematically prevent, and address civilian harm in DoD operations.”
The lawmakers also point to Hegseth’s public expressions of contempt for “stupid rules of engagement” and “tepid legality,” both of which the Pentagon has said get in the way of “maximum lethality.” Hegseth also said roughly two weeks into the Iran war that “no quarter” would be given to “our enemies” in Iran—a statement that experts said was a clear violation of international law and a war crime.
“These statements not only harm civilians and undermine established standards, but also endanger US servicemembers with greater risk of reciprocation and erode good order and discipline,” the senators write.
Hegseth, the Trump administration’s top cheerleader for the war of choice in Iran, is currently facing five articles of impeachment in the US House of Representatives, including one stating that the Pentagon chief has “authorized, condoned, or failed to prevent the use of military force in a manner inconsistent with the law of armed conflict, such as operations resulting in large numbers of civilian casualties and the destruction of civilian infrastructure in Iran, including a girls’ school in Minab.”
Separately, the Pentagon leader is also facing scrutiny over a recent report alleging that his investment broker tried to purchase millions of dollars worth of defense industry stocks weeks before the US and Israel launched their war on Iran.
Warren, the top Democrat on the Senate Banking Committee, formally asked the chairman of the US Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) to “investigate any attempt by Secretary Hegseth or any other individual to trade on the basis of misappropriated insider information.”
“If accurate, the recent public reporting suggests that, prior to launching a military conflict that he was instrumental in planning, the secretary of defense may have misappropriated top secret military information for personal financial gain,” Warren wrote. “The SEC must do its part to stem corrupt actions that threaten market integrity and national security.”
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