Politics
Hegseth removes head of Pentagon intelligence agency, other senior officials
- Trump administration removes DIA chief Lt General Jeffrey Kruse.
- Hegseth also sacks heads of Naval Reserves, Naval Special Warfare.
- Firing reflects habit of treating intelligence as loyalty test: senator.
US Defence Secretary Pete Hegseth fired the head of the Pentagon’s intelligence agency and two other senior military commanders, three US officials told Reuters, the latest move by President Donald Trump’s administration to purge officials at the Pentagon.
It was not immediately clear why Lieutenant General Jeffrey Kruse, who led the Defence Intelligence Agency, was fired. Hegseth’s purge broadened later on Friday.
One US official, speaking on the condition of anonymity, told Reuters that in addition to Kruse, Hegseth had also ordered the removal of the chief of US Naval Reserves and the commander of Naval Special Warfare Command.
All three officials said it was unknown why they were fired.
“The firing of yet another senior national security official underscores the Trump administration’s dangerous habit of treating intelligence as a loyalty test rather than a safeguard for our country,” said US Senator Mark Warner, who is the vice chair of the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence.
The firing was first reported by the Washington Post.
Trump’s purge
The move appeared to be the latest attempt by the Trump administration to penalise current and former military, intelligence and law enforcement officials whose views have been seen as at odds with Trump.
In April, Trump fired General Timothy Haugh as director of the National Security Agency, in a purge that included more than a dozen staff at the White House National Security Council.
Hegseth has also gone after uniformed military officials at the Pentagon. In February, he fired Air Force General CQ Brown, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, who was dismissed along with five other admirals and generals in an unprecedented shake-up of US military leadership.
The chief of the US Air Force made a surprise announcement on Monday that he planned to retire only halfway through his tenure.
While it was not clear exactly why Kruse was fired, it came after a preliminary DIA assessment leaked to the news media that said the June 22 US airstrikes on three Iranian nuclear facilities had set Tehran’s program back only a few months, a finding contradicting Trump’s claim that the targets were “obliterated.”
The leaking of the assessment, which Reuters also reported, enraged Trump. The White House denounced the top-secret assessment as “flat out wrong,” and Trump attacked CNN, the New York Times and other outlets that obtained the report, calling them “scum” and “FAKE NEWS.”
The Trump administration has conducted a sweeping purge of US military and intelligence officers and diplomats that it says is part of an effort to slash the size of the US government, shrinking the federal budget and punishing what it describes as the “politicisation or weaponisation” of intelligence.
News of Kruse’s firing came two days after Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard announced that she was revoking on Trump’s orders the security clearances of 37 current and former US intelligence professionals.
This week’s security clearance revocations were only the latest of scores of such revocations of Trump’s second term.
They have included Biden, who defeated Trump in the 2020 election, and former Vice President Kamala Harris, who lost last year’s vote.
Earlier this week Gabbard also announced the first major overhaul of her office since its creation, slashing personnel by more than 40% by October 1 and saving more than $700 million per year.
Indian police this week seized 414 cooking‑gas canisters hidden in a graveyard in Hyderabad city and arrested those involved in trying to sell them on the black market amid shortages due to the Iran war, a government official said on Thursday.
Authorities have stepped up raids to curb hoarding of liquefied petroleum gas canisters after the US-Israeli war against Iran disrupted shipping, causing supply shortages. India, the world’s No 2 LPG importer, meets about 60% of its demand through overseas purchases, mostly from the Middle East.
“Just yesterday, around 2,600 raids were carried out and about 700 cylinders were seized,” Sujata Sharma, a senior official in the Ministry of Petroleum and Natural Gas, told a regular briefing on the Middle East crisis.
“In addition, around 400 cylinders were recently found at one location inside a graveyard in Hyderabad. Ten people have been detained there, and the distributor involved has been suspended,” she said.
Police said the accused had been selling both commercial and domestic canisters from the graveyard at nearly three times the current market price. A commercial canister that costs about 2,100 Indian rupees ($22) had been sold for as much as 6,000 rupees.
The total value of the seized canisters and some vehicles used by the accused was nearly 2.2 million rupees, police said. Reuters could not immediately contact the accused or their representatives.
“The supply of natural gas to domestic consumers is 100% assured,” Sharma said. “With regard to LPG supply, prices have remained stable despite international volatility, and there has been no increase in the price of domestic LPG cylinders.”
To ease the pressure on LPG supplies, India has been promoting the use of alternatives such as kerosene, coal and biogas, while accelerating the rollout of piped natural gas for households.
WASHINGTON: US President Donald Trump made fun of the French president and his wife during a private lunch Wednesday, as he lambasted Nato allies for not joining the war against Iran that has roiled the Middle East.
“We didn’t need them, but I asked anyway,” Trump told a private lunch in a video posted briefly on the White House YouTube channel before access was blocked.
“I call up France, Macron — whose wife treats him extremely badly. Still recovering from the right to the jaw,” Trump said.
He was referring to a May 2025 news video that appeared to show Brigitte Macron shoving the French president’s face on a trip to Vietnam, which Macron later rejected as part of a disinformation campaign.
“And I said, ‘Emmanuel, we’d love to have some help in the Gulf even though we’re setting records on knocking out bad people and knocking out ballistic missiles. We’d love to have some help. If you could, could you please send ships immediately,'” Trump continued.
He then mimics a French accent to give Macron’s alleged answer: “‘No no no, we cannot do that, Donald. We can do that after the war is won,'” he said.
“I said, ‘No no, I don’t need after the war is won Emmanuel,'” Trump said.
“So I learned about Nato — Nato won’t be there if we ever have the big one, you know what I mean by the big one,” Trump said, without elaborating.
He also branded Nato a “paper tiger,” the latest salvo by Trump and his top officials against the transatlantic alliance since he returned to the White House last year.
On Tuesday, Secretary of State Marco Rubio said the United States “is going to have to reexamine” its relationship with Nato once the war against Iran has concluded.
Former Iranian foreign minister Kamal Kharazi was seriously wounded in a strike that also claimed the life of his wife, Iranian media reported.
Still an adviser to the government, Kharazi had given an interview to CNN a few weeks ago.
According to the newspapers Shargh, Etemad and Ham Mihan, his home in Tehran was targeted on Wednesday in a US-Israeli strike.
He was badly injured and hospitalised following the attack, the outlets said.
Kharazi had served as foreign minister from 1997 to 2005 under reformist ex-president Mohammad Khatami.
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