China Says Hegseth Is Touting a Cold War Mentality in Calling It a Threat

US Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth delivers his speech during the 22nd Shangri-La Dialogue summit in Singapore, Saturday, May 31, 2025. (AP)
US Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth delivers his speech during the 22nd Shangri-La Dialogue summit in Singapore, Saturday, May 31, 2025. (AP)
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China Says Hegseth Is Touting a Cold War Mentality in Calling It a Threat

US Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth delivers his speech during the 22nd Shangri-La Dialogue summit in Singapore, Saturday, May 31, 2025. (AP)
US Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth delivers his speech during the 22nd Shangri-La Dialogue summit in Singapore, Saturday, May 31, 2025. (AP)

China on Sunday denounced US Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth for calling the Asian country a threat, accusing him of touting a Cold War mentality as tensions between Washington and Beijing further escalate.

The foreign ministry said Hegseth had vilified Beijing with defamatory allegations the previous day before at the Shangri-La Dialogue, a global security conference. The statement also accused the United States of inciting conflict and confrontation in the region.

“Hegseth deliberately ignored the call for peace and development by countries in the region, and instead touted the Cold War mentality for bloc confrontation,” it said, referring to the post-World War II rivalry between the US and the former Soviet Union.

“No country in the world deserves to be called a hegemonic power other than the US itself,” it said, alleging that Washington is also undermining peace and stability in the Asia-Pacific.

Hegseth said in Singapore on Saturday that Washington will bolster its defenses overseas to counter what the Pentagon sees as rapidly developing threats by Beijing, particularly in its aggressive stance toward Taiwan.

China’s army “is rehearsing for the real deal,” Hegseth said. “We are not going to sugarcoat it — the threat China poses is real. And it could be imminent.”

The Chinese statement stressed that the Taiwan question is entirely China’s internal affair, saying the US must “never play with fire” with it. It also alleged Washington had deployed offensive weaponry in the South China Sea, was “stoking flames and creating tensions in the Asia-Pacific” and "turning the region into a powder keg.”

In a Facebook post on Saturday, China's Embassy in Singapore said Hegseth’s speech was “steeped in provocations and instigation.”

The US and China had reached a deal last month to cut US President Donald Trump’s tariffs from 145% to 30% for 90 days, creating time for negotiators from both sides to reach a more substantive agreement. China also reduced its taxes on US goods from 125% to 10%.

But it's uncertain if a trade war truce will last. Trump in a social media post on Friday said he would no longer be “nice” with China when it comes to trade and accused Beijing of breaking an unspecified agreement with the US.

Tensions escalated anew after the US said on Wednesday it would start revoking visas for Chinese students studying there.

Separately, the Chinese Embassy in Singapore criticized attempts to link the issue of Taiwan with that of the war in Ukraine after French President Emmanuel Macron warned of a dangerous double standard in focusing on a potential conflict with China at the cost of abandoning Ukraine.

The embassy made no mention of Macron in its post on Facebook that included a photo showing the French president at the Singapore forum.

“If one tries to denounce ‘double standards’ through the lens of a double standard, the only result we can get is still double standard,” it said.

China, which usually sends its defense minister to the Shangri-La forum, this time sent a lower-level delegation led by Maj. Gen. Hu Gangfeng, the vice president of the People’s Liberation Army National Defense University.



Iranian Nuclear Program Degraded by up to Two Years, Pentagon Says

Sean Parnell. (AFP/Getty Images)
Sean Parnell. (AFP/Getty Images)
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Iranian Nuclear Program Degraded by up to Two Years, Pentagon Says

Sean Parnell. (AFP/Getty Images)
Sean Parnell. (AFP/Getty Images)

The Pentagon said on Wednesday that US strikes 10 days ago had degraded Iran's nuclear program by up to two years, suggesting the US military operation likely achieved its goals despite a far more cautious initial assessment that leaked to the public.

Sean Parnell, a Pentagon spokesman, offered the figure at a briefing to reporters, adding that the official estimate was "probably closer to two years." Parnell did not provide evidence to back up his assessment.

"We have degraded their program by one to two years, at least intel assessments inside the Department (of Defense) assess that," Parnell told a news briefing.

US military bombers carried out strikes against three Iranian nuclear facilities on June 22 using more than a dozen 30,000-pound (13,600-kg) bunker-buster bombs and more than two dozen Tomahawk land attack cruise missiles.

The evolving US intelligence about the impact of the strikes is being closely watched, after President Donald Trump said almost immediately after they took place that Iran's program had been obliterated, language echoed by Parnell at Wednesday's briefing.

Such conclusions often take the US intelligence community weeks or more to determine.

"All of the intelligence that we've seen (has) led us to believe that Iran's -- those facilities especially, have been completely obliterated," Parnell said.

Over the weekend, the head of the UN nuclear watchdog, Rafael Grossi, said that Iran could be producing enriched uranium in a few months, raising doubts about how effective US strikes to destroy Tehran's nuclear program have been.

Several experts have also cautioned that Iran likely moved a stockpile of near weapons-grade highly enriched uranium out of the deeply buried Fordow site before the strikes and could be hiding it.

But US Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth said last week he was unaware of intelligence suggesting Iran had moved its highly enriched uranium to shield it from US strikes.

A preliminary assessment last week from the Defense Intelligence Agency suggested that the strikes may have only set back Iran's nuclear program by months. But Trump administration officials said that assessment was low confidence and had been overtaken by intelligence showing Iran's nuclear program was severely damaged.

According to Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araqchi, the strikes on the Fordow nuclear site caused severe damage.

"No one exactly knows what has transpired in Fordow. That being said, what we know so far is that the facilities have been seriously and heavily damaged," Araqchi said in the interview broadcast by CBS News on Tuesday.