The U.S.-Israeli war against Iran widened sharply on Wednesday, with U.S. Secretary of War Pete Hegseth declaring that the United States was winning and that its military could fight as long as needed.
“Our air defences and that of our allies have plenty of runway. We can sustain this fight easily for as long as we need to,” he said.
Hegseth’s comments came as he confirmed that a U.S. submarine sank an Iranian warship off Sri Lanka, killing at least 87 people.
“We have only just begun to hunt, dismantle, demoralize, destroy and defeat their capabilities, just four days in,” he said.
At the same briefing, U.S. air force Gen. Dan Caine, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, said the U.S. would “now begin to expand inland, striking progressively deeper into Iranian territory and creating additional freedom of manoeuvre for U.S. forces.”
U.S. Secretary of War Pete Hegseth said a U.S. submarine sunk an Iranian warship, and that his country is ‘winning war in Iran.’ But the White House has struggled with its messaging about why it started the war in the first place. Former U.S. State Department official Andrew Miller says that’s ‘characteristic’ for the Trump administration.
Expanding reach
The escalation came as the powerful son of Iran’s slain supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, emerged as a front-runner to succeed him, suggesting Tehran was not about to buckle to pressure five days after the U.S. and Israel launched a military campaign that has killed hundreds and convulsed global markets.
In a sign of the conflict’s expanding reach, Hegseth said the U.S. submarine strike hit an Iranian vessel off Sri Lanka’s southern coast, thousands of kilometres from the Persian Gulf, as fighting paralyzed shipping through the Strait of Hormuz for a fifth day, choking off vital Middle East oil and gas flows.
The U.S. and Israel pressed on with their round-the-clock assaults on Iran, with Hegseth saying the United States was dominating.
“This was never meant to be a fair fight, and it is not a fair fight. We are punching them while they’re down,” Hegseth, sounding supremely confident, told a briefing at the Pentagon.
But he acknowledged that Iran is still able to carry out missile attacks even as the U.S. tries to control the country’s airspace.
Caine added that U.S. service members “remain in harm’s way, and we must be clear-eyed that the risk is still high.”.
A U.S. submarine sank an Iranian warship off the southern coast of Sri Lanka, U.S. War Secretary Pete Hegseth confirmed at a Pentagon briefing. Sri Lankan Foreign Affairs Minister Vijitha Herath said 180 people were on-board the vessel. Of those, at least 87 have been killed, while more than 30 were rescued. CORRECTION (Mar. 4, 2026): An earlier version of this video showed Hegseth characterizing the incident as the first time since the Second World War that a submarine had sunk an enemy combatant ship with a torpedo. In fact, a British submarine sank the Argentinian ship Belgrano with torpedoes in 1982.
Senate votes down effort to rein in Trump
Hours later, the latest effort by Democrats and a few Republicans in the U.S. Senate to rein in U.S. President Donald Trump’s repeated foreign troop deployments failed.
“Today every senator — every single one — will pick a side,” Senate Democratic Leader Chuck Schumer said before the vote. “Do you stand with the American people who are exhausted with forever wars in the Middle East or stand with Donald Trump and Pete Hegseth as they bumble us headfirst into another war?”
A majority of the Senate backed Trump’s military campaign against Iran, voting to block the bipartisan resolution to stop the air war and require that any hostilities against Iran be authorized by Congress.
The tally in the 100-member Senate was 53 to 47 not to advance the resolution, largely along party lines, with almost every Republican voting against the procedural motion and almost every Democrat supporting it.
War Powers Resolution
The War Powers Resolution (WPR) of 1973 acts as a check on presidential power.
Under the WPR, the president can only involve the military in an armed conflict when Congress has declared war or provided specific authority, or in response to an attack on U.S. territory or its military. It requires the president to report regularly to Congress, which the administration started to do on Monday.
The resolution also requires unauthorized military actions to be terminated within 60 days unless the deadline is extended.
It provides a procedure for Congress to withdraw the military from a conflict, and members of both parties have said they plan to put such legislation to a vote this week.
It’s highly unlikely such a vote would garner a two-thirds majority needed to override a Trump veto, but some lawmakers said it would put members on the record in an election year.
Some legal experts say popular opposition might be the main check on Trump’s ability to continue the attacks.