US SECRETARY of War Pete Hegseth dismissed three senior Army officers on Thursday, including the Army’s top general, in a sweeping purge that an analyst has linked to preparations for a ground invasion of Iran.
The Pentagon announced that Hegseth had forced out Army Chief of Staff General Randy George, Major General William Green Jr., head of the Army’s Chaplain Corps, and David Hodne, who oversaw training and transformation initiatives.
No explanations were given. Pentagon spokesperson Sean Parnell confirmed that General George was ‘retiring effective immediately’.
According to US-based geopolitical analyst Shaiel Ben-Ephraim, writing on X, George was removed because he opposed Hegseth’s push for a land war in Iran.
A seasoned infantry officer with experience in Iraq and Afghanistan, George had raised serious concerns about the costs and logistical difficulties of fighting across Iran’s terrain, arguing that a ground invasion would be ‘too costly to launch and too destabilising to sustain’.
The friction between George and Hegseth reportedly intensified as thousands of soldiers from the 82nd Airborne Division began arriving in the region.
While the Trump administration has not publicly confirmed plans for a ground war, the deployment of these elite units is widely seen as preparation for one, a move George resisted as premature or strategically unsound.
Ben-Ephraim noted that Hegseth has publicly criticised senior military leadership for being ‘overly concerned with the legalities of warfare’ and has sought to install officers aligned with what he calls a ‘lethal mindset’ for immediate combat.
George’s removal came just one day after President Donald Trump’s national address, in which he said the war against Iran would continue for a few more weeks.
Hegseth moved quickly to replace George with General Christopher LaNeve, a close former aide. Ben-Ephraim drew a parallel to the 2003 sidelining of General Eric Shinseki, who clashed with the Bush administration over troop levels for the Iraq war.
‘This shows very clearly that Hegseth is pushing for an invasion,’ the analyst said, though he added it remained unclear whether Trump fully backed the plan.
‘My feeling is that he is very hesitant to do it because of the terrible political position he is in and the analysis from all serious military minds that it would be a disaster.’
NATO rift deepens over Iran!
French President Emmanuel Macron has rebuked Donald Trump for mocking him and his wife during a private lunch in Washington, calling the remarks ‘neither elegant nor up to standard’.
Arriving in South Korea for a state visit on Thursday, Macron told reporters, ‘I am not going to respond to them – they do not merit a response’.
The lunch on Wednesday, attended by faith leaders and government figures, saw Trump lambast NATO allies for refusing to join the war against Iran.
Mimicking a French accent, he claimed Macron’s wife Brigitte ‘treats him extremely badly’, adding that Macron was ‘still recovering from the right to the jaw’.
He appeared to be referencing a May 2025 video, filmed by an Associated Press camera operator, which showed what looked like Brigitte Macron pushing her husband’s face as they disembarked a plane during an official visit to Hanoi.
Trump recounted asking France for naval support. ‘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. If you could, could you please send ships immediately.’
He then adopted a French accent to impersonate Macron’s reply: ‘No, no, no, we cannot do that, Donald. We can do that after the war is won.’
Macron also criticised the conduct of the war itself.
‘This is not a show. We are talking about war and peace and the lives of men and women,’ he said.
‘When you want to be serious you don’t say every day the opposite of what you said the day before. And maybe you shouldn’t be speaking every day. You should just let things quieten down.’
‘They then lament that they are alone in an operation they decided on alone. It’s not our operation,’ he said, declining to comment further on a campaign the US and Israel ‘decided on by themselves’.
Macron also questioned Trump’s claims about Iran’s nuclear capacity.
Strikes in June 2025 had supposedly ‘obliterated’ Iranian nuclear facilities, yet by the time war began in February 2026 Trump was calling it the ‘last best chance to strike at Iran’s nuclear weapons programme’.
‘I remind you that six months ago we were told that everything had been destroyed and all had been sorted out,’ Macron noted.
On the Strait of Hormuz, which Iran has closed in retaliation, Macron dismissed as ‘unrealistic’ the suggestion that affected countries mount a military operation to reopen it.
‘It would expose anyone crossing the Strait to coastal threats from the Revolutionary Guards, who possess significant resources, as well as ballistic missiles, a host of other risks.’
