U.S. Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth will testify before the House Armed Services Committee on Wednesday in his first appearance before Congress since the Iran war began.

The hearing, scheduled around Trump’s $1.5 trillion defense budget request, comes with the conflict unresolved, the Strait of Hormuz still largely closed, and economic fallout continuing globally. Top U.S. military officer General Dan Caine is also set to testify.

What will lawmakers ask Pete Hegseth about at the Iran war hearing?

Lawmakers from both parties have previously expressed frustration with the classified briefings they have received on the war.

Democrats are expected to press Hegseth on the administration’s lack of a public plan to end the conflict, the deaths of U.S. troops, and articles of impeachment filed against him earlier this month. The hearing is likely to be the most high-profile congressional scrutiny of the war so far.

Why have Democrats filed impeachment articles against Hegseth?

House Democrats introduced six articles of impeachment against Hegseth earlier this month, accusing him of “high crimes and misdemeanors” including waging war on Iran without congressional approval.

More than a dozen Democrats also sent a letter last week demanding a “formal, immediate investigation” into the deaths of six U.S. troops in Kuwait on March 1. They accused Hegseth of failing to protect American forces and then misleading the public about the circumstances of the attack.

“Finally, Secretary Hegseth will come before the House Armed Services Committee this week. It is time to answer for this war of choice,” Representative Maggie Goodlander, a Democratic committee member, wrote on X.

How many US troops have been killed in the Iran war?

A total of 13 American troops have been killed in the conflict: six in the Iranian attack in Kuwait, one in a separate attack in Saudi Arabia, and six in a plane crash in Iraq. A further 400 have been wounded.

Trump has indefinitely extended what was initially a two-week ceasefire, but negotiations have yet to produce a breakthrough.

The war has led Iran to close the Strait of Hormuz, sending oil prices sharply higher. Washington responded with a blockade of Iranian ports and has deployed three aircraft carriers in the Middle East for the first time in more than 20 years.

What other issues could come up at the Hegseth hearing?

Beyond the Iran war, lawmakers are expected to raise repeated shakeups of senior Pentagon personnel since Trump returned to office. The Pentagon announced last week that Navy Secretary John Phelan was leaving “immediately,” following the removal of top U.S. Army officer General Randy George earlier in April.

Hegseth may also face questions about his conflict with AI firm Anthropic, which refused to allow its models to be used for mass civilian surveillance or fully autonomous lethal military operations.