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Friday, March 20, 2026

Hegseth calls IDF strike on gas field a ‘warning,’ as Trump says he told Netanyahu: ‘Don’t do that’

US Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth
on Thursday said the US would again launch “the largest strike package yet” in the ongoing US-Israeli campaign in Iran, and said Israel’s recent strike on an Iranian gas field was a “warning." “To date, we’ve struck over 7,000 targets across Iran and its military infrastructure,” Hegseth said at a Pentagon briefing. “That is not incremental. That is overwhelming force applied with pecision. And again, today will be the largest strike package yet, just like yesterday was.”

Iran continued launching strikes at Israel on Thursday, without any injuries reported in nine salvos as of the afternoon. The Islamic Republic also continued its missile fire at targets in the Gulf. Meanwhile, Israel said it destroyed several Iranian navy vessels in its first-ever strike on northern Iran. US President Donald Trump said early on Thursday that Wednesday’s South Pars gas field strike was uncoordinated with the US, and that Israel would not hit Iran’s gas sites again, but that the US would if Iran kept up attacks on Gulf gas fields.

Later Thursday, Trump added that he has told Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu not to strike any more Iranian oil and gas fields. “I told him, ‘Don’t do that,’ and he won’t do that. We didn’t discuss [it]. We do independent, but get along great. It’s coordinated. But on occasion he’ll do something, and if I don’t like it.. and so we’re not doing that anymore,” Trump told reporters in the Oval Office alongside Japans’s visiting prime minister.

However, US sources told The Times of Israel and other media outlets that Washington had approved the strike, that it was coordinated, and that the president knew about it ahead of time. Neither Hegseth nor US Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Gen. Dan Caine, who spoke alongside him at the Pentagon, repeated Trump’s claim of being in the dark. (Read More)