US Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth compared Iran to a "cancerous tumor" and stated that it was not the United States that started the conflict, but they will finish it.

"The United States did not start this conflict, but we will finish it. If you kill and threaten Americans anywhere in the world, as Iran has done, we will hunt you down and kill you," Hegseth wrote on social network X.

According to him, US President Donald Trump, by announcing the operation against Iran on Saturday, "began to fight this cancerous tumor."

He emphasized that the US "will not tolerate powerful missiles aimed at the American people," and that Iran "will never have nuclear weapons."

Hegseth called Operation "Epic Fury" against Iran "the most lethal, most complex, and most precise air operation in history."