Panetta Predicts Six More Months of Iran War as Report Reveals Four Commanders Objected to Troop Extension

Since U.S.-Israeli strikes killed Iranian Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei in February and the war dragged into its seventh month, the conflict has settled into a grinding stalemate now drawing open criticism from both a former Obama-era defense chief and a former Biden-era Air Force secretary.

Weekend strikes, no deal in sight

U.S. Central Command hit three Iranian tankers on Saturday after Iran's Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps launched ballistic missiles at two U.S. Navy ships, according to The Independent. Iranian parliament speaker Mohammad Baqer Qalibaf warned Sunday that "the rules of the game" against Iran had changed, saying "any attack against Iran's interests and security will receive a faster, heavier and more painful response."

Three senior Iranian sources told Reuters the U.S. blockade of Iran's oil exports is growing harder for Tehran to withstand. Energy Secretary Chris Wright pushed back on claims the blockade of the Strait of Hormuz is working in Iran's favor, telling CNN that U.S. transits through the strait are averaging over 9 million barrels a day and, combined with pipelines that route around it, flows are running at roughly two-thirds of pre-conflict levels.

Gas prices haven't followed that optimism. AAA put the national average at $4.14 a gallon over Labor Day weekend, the highest ever recorded for that holiday, according to The Hill.

Trump rules out nukes, calls Iran "defeated"

Asked in the Oval Office whether the U.S. might use a nuclear weapon against Iran, President Trump called the question "stupid," according to Fox News. "They're totally defeated militarily," he said. "So now I defeat him, and now I should use a nuclear weapon on top of them."

That framing sits uneasily next to the assessment offered by former CIA Director and Defense Secretary Leon Panetta, who told The Guardian the war is likely to grind on for another six months without resolution. "It's no mystery that the United States and Iran are caught in a terrible stalemate, in which there really are very few options available to bring this war to an end," Panetta said, warning the fight risks becoming "another forever war in the Middle East."

Four commanders said no, Pentagon calls the report a smear

The most consequential new disclosure came via a Washington Post report, cited by The Guardian, that four four-star commanders filed formal "non-concurs" against a plan to keep more than 50,000 U.S. troops in the Middle East through September, with some deployments potentially stretching into 2027. The objections reportedly came from Adm. Daryl Caudle, chief of naval operations; Gen. Alexus Grynkewich, head of U.S. European Command; Gen. Francis L. Donovan, chief of U.S. Southern Command; and Adm. Samuel Paparo, chief of U.S. Indo-Pacific Command. The Army and Air Force reportedly concurred with the extension but flagged significant risks.

Caudle reportedly told Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth the Navy cannot sustain its current commitment without a defined end date. Paparo objected to continued demands for an aircraft carrier strike group and destroyers. The European and Southern Command chiefs said shifting assets to Central Command was already degrading their ability to meet homeland-defense obligations.

Pentagon chief spokesman Sean Parnell did not dispute that the objections were filed. Instead he attacked the reporting itself, writing on X that "non-concurs are standard" and that "the Secretary sees them constantly," while accusing the Post of publishing classified material and calling the story a product of people who "hate President Trump and Secretary Hegseth more than they love America." A community note attached to his post pointed out that while leaking classified material is illegal for government employees, the Supreme Court ruled in 1971 that the First Amendment protects the press's right to publish classified information of public interest. It's a fair question whether four sitting combatant commanders formally objecting to a troop-extension plan is itself newsworthy regardless of classification, and Parnell's statement did not identify which specific facts in the Post's account he considers inaccurate.

Before publication, Parnell gave the Post a calmer version, saying troop-commitment decisions are "based on the current threat assessment, strategic priorities established by the President, and the advice" of military leadership.

Republicans and Democrats both asking why

Frank Kendall, who led the Air Force under President Biden, told ABC's "This Week" he still doesn't understand "what advice was given to the president that led him to start this conflict." Kendall noted Trump never sought congressional authorization for the war and said the early assumption the Iranian regime would collapse quickly "was not one that's been held by anybody else until now."

Panetta separately argued that reports of tension inside the Pentagon are broadcasting weakness to adversaries. "Whether it's Iran, or whether it's our adversaries, they're now looking at the United States, and see weakness in terms of our ability to be able to really implement our military capability of defending our country," he told The Guardian.

Fox News's weekend report leaned into the administration's more upbeat storylines, Trump's nuclear-weapon denial and a new Venezuela oil deal in which North American Blue Energy Partners took over fields previously run by Chinese and Russian firms, while barely touching the commanders' objections. The Guardian and Independent gave the internal Pentagon friction and stalemate assessment the bulk of their attention. Neither framing is wrong, but read alone, either one gives an incomplete picture of a war that the administration says is winding down and that four of its own combatant commanders have formally warned is straining the force.

A separate CBS News report found the Pentagon quietly instructed personnel in August to stop calling the conflict "Operation Epic Fury," three months after officials had declared that operation over on May 5. The guidance, issued from Hegseth's public affairs office under Parnell, tells troops to instead use the phrase "overseas operations in the [Central Command] area of responsibility." CBS reported the renaming raises unresolved questions about how the Pentagon categorizes casualties from strikes that happened after the operation's official end date, a question the Defense Department has not yet answered on the record.