On Wednesday, as he was about to depart from a NATO summit, President Donald Trump seemed to make a stunning admission: He gave Iran the green light to attack a U.S. military base in retaliation for his own strikes on three Iranian nuclear sites.
The Iranians "were very nice. They gave us warning," Trump told reporters. "They said, 'We're going to shoot 'em. Is one o'clock OK?' I said, 'It's fine,'" he added.
The casual, nonchalant tone of Trump's acceptance that Iran would attack U.S. forces at Al Udeid Air Base in Qatar -- an assault that involved more than a dozen Iranian missiles -- was a sharp contrast to the message of steely-eyed professionalism and heroism that his top military adviser, Joint Chiefs Chairman Gen. Dan Caine, offered to reporters the next day for what he said was likely the largest single use of the Patriot air defense system in U.S. history.
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"There was a lot of metal flying around, and yet our U.S. air defenders had only seconds to make complex decisions with strategic impact," Caine told reporters.
"These awesome humans, along with their Qatari brothers and sisters in arms, stood between a salvo of Iranian missiles and the safety of Al Udeid," he added, before calling them the "unsung heroes of the 21st-century United States Army."
Those platitudes also came at the same briefing where Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, irate over media reports that cited a leaked intelligence report suggesting U.S. strikes on Iran may not have had the effect he claimed, accused reporters of willfully undermining the accomplishments of service members.
When asked about this stark contrast -- a president whose words seemed to suggest he welcomed an attack that then required heroic actions from air defenders -- Hegseth's office offered more praise of the troops at Al Udeid.
"The safety of our service members is of the utmost importance to Secretary Hegseth, and he couldn't be prouder of the troops who put their lives on the line every day to keep Americans safe," Pentagon press secretary Kingsley Wilson told Military.com in an emailed statement.
In a later statement, Chief Pentagon Spokesman Sean Parnell said “thanks to President Trump and Secretary Hegseth’s leadership, our troops know that their commander-in-chief and secretary of defense have their back. Any insinuation to the contrary is absurd.”
Meanwhile, the White House declined to comment on Friday.
Trump himself seemed to be aware of the danger that the Iranian attack posed because right after saying he gave Iran permission to strike, he said that "everyone was emptied off the base so they couldn't get hurt except for the gunners."
Caine, on Thursday, said that only two Patriot surface-to-air missile batteries remained on base, leaving "roughly 44 American soldiers responsible for defending the entire base," which includes the forward headquarters for U.S. Central Command.
"The oldest soldier was a 28-year-old captain. The youngest was a 21-year-old private who'd been in the military for less than two years," Caine said.
Privately, many officials within the Pentagon struggled to explain the president's remarks, though some pointed to his history of bluster and exaggeration.
One defense official said that military leaders in the Pentagon didn't believe that the president provoked or allowed the attack to occur and that the Iranians were always going to look for a way to conduct a proportionate response to the U.S. strikes on their nuclear sites.
Meanwhile, a closed-door classified briefing Thursday for senators on Capitol Hill on the strikes ended with lawmakers telling reporters it was still too early to know just how much damage Iran's nuclear program sustained.
Also on Thursday, Hegseth was quick to point to intelligence assessments from both the CIA and the Director of National Intelligence that cited "new intelligence" that the three facilities were destroyed.
Neither statement, however, offered any details about the new intelligence, and when a reporter asked Hegseth whether he felt the public needed to see the intelligence being cited, he countered: "Do you have a top secret clearance, sir?"
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