Hegseth to face lawmakers for first time since Iran war started

Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth heads to Capitol Hill Wednesday for what is formally billed as a routine hearing on the Pentagon’s budget request.

But the appearance — the first before Congress for Hegseth since the war in Iran began in February — lands just two days before a 60-day deadline to wind down hostilities.

It also comes amid intensifying questions on the Hill about how quickly the Pentagon is depleting weapons stockpiles, and as lawmakers continue to scrutinize Hegseth’s unusual spate of firings of senior defense officials without a public explanation. 

Questions over civilian casualties in the Iran war, as well as whether the U.S. was properly prepared for retaliatory strikes, and broader questions over the strategic rationale for the conflict, are likely to be a key part of committee members on both sides of the aisle questioning of Hegseth, multiple congressional aides explained. 

This week marks Hegseth’s first return to Capitol Hill in nearly a year — with testimony Wednesday before the House Armed Services Committee and Thursday on the Senate side — and his first exposure to sustained scrutiny since the war with Iran began. He’ll be joined by Gen. Dan Caine, the chairman of the joint chiefs of staff at both hearings. 

While Hegseth has appeared before the press since the conflict began in late February, he has largely limited engagement to reporters viewed as sympathetic to the administration.

At the center of this week’s hearings is the administration’s request for $1.5 trillion in defense spending, the largest amount in the Pentagon’s history and a jump of 50% over current levels, which would mark the largest single-year increase in a generation.

The proposal would triple spending on drones and related technologies to more than $74 billion, while directing over $30 billion toward munitions procurement. But that budget request was developed months ago: not account for spending in the war with Iran.

“The overlap, you’ll see, is the request for munitions, which is something we always need,” Jules Hurst III, acting undersecretary of defense and the Pentagon’s comptroller, told reporters last week. “We always need to increase our magazine depth. But outside of that, there aren’t any operational costs in here from Iran.” Hurst is set to join Hegseth and Caine at the Senate hearing on Thursday. 

That means the Pentagon may require additional funding to cover the cost of the vast quantities of munitions being expended as U.S. forces have struck more than 13,000 targets in Iran since February, along with other significant war-related expenses.

Defense experts have long raised concerns about stockpile constraints even before the war with Iran, with some estimates of a potential conflict with China suggesting the United States could exhaust long-range missile inventories within the first few weeks of fighting. 

In less than two months of exchanging fire with Iran, the U.S. has used roughly half of certain missiles and other munitions, according to an analysis published last week by the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS).

Retired Col. Mark Cancian, a senior adviser at CSIS and an author of the report, said Operation Epic Fury “does create a window of vulnerability” for a period of as many as four years – the time it would take to replenish stocks.

“The United States has enough munitions to fight this war if it stubs up again,” Cancian said. “But the risk is in a future war with China, where inventory levels are far below where war planners would like them to be.”

Pentagon officials have maintained the U.S. has enough ammo to fight Iran. Though rearming the force with new munitions can take years, with some missiles requiring one to two years to build, reflecting an inherent limit on how many complex munitions the defense industry can produce each year, spurring much of the interest in huge investments in relatively cheap, easier-to-produce drones, which the Pentagon continues to surge into the Middle East. 

Hegseth is also likely to face questions on his unprecedented firing or sidelining of two dozen senior military officials, particularly during a time of war, where he recently fired Gen. Randy George, who was the Army’s top officer and John Phelan, the Navy secretary. 

Hegseth has also fired numerous lower-profile generals, without explanation, including Maj. Gen. William Green Jr., who was the chief of the Army Chaplain Corps, a collection of clergy from different faiths within the service. He has also blocked the promotion of four colonels to brigadier general, two of whom are women and two are Black, according to two U.S. officials, who both described a secretary of defense intervening in promotions as unprecedented.

Meanwhile, Democrats have failed in their multiple attempts to rein in President Donald Trump’s authority to wage war in Iran without Capitol Hill’s approval. 

The 1973 War Powers Resolution gives the president latitude to conduct military strikes for a 60-day window, which closes Friday. The law allows for a one-time 30-day extension for the president to act without the consent of lawmakers, though it is unclear whether Trump intends to do so or whether Republicans will take into account the ceasefire in a way that relieves any deadline pressure.